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Derwentwater has four main islands: St Herbert's, Derwent Island, Lord's Island and Rampsholme. Each is visible from the shore, each is mostly inaccessible, and each has a history that is considerably more interesting than their quiet appearance suggests.
The islands are part of what makes Derwentwater look different from other Lake District lakes. Windermere has one island; Ullswater and Wastwater have none. The multiple wooded masses in the middle of Derwentwater — their arrangement shifting as you move around the shore, new compositions revealing themselves at each change of angle — are central to the particular visual quality of the lake that has made it the most painted and most photographed of all the Lake District waters.
The largest and most historically significant island is St Herbert's, in the southern half of the lake. St Herbert was a 7th-century hermit who retreated here around 685 AD to live in solitude and prayer, maintaining a friendship with St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne that was conducted entirely by annual visit — Herbert rowing to the mainland each year to see his friend, Cuthbert visiting the island when circumstances allowed.
The story that has attached itself most firmly to Herbert's memory is the account of his death. According to Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Herbert prayed that he would not survive his friend, and the prayer was answered: both died on 20 March 687. The coincidence — if that is what it was — established Herbert's reputation for sanctity in the centuries that followed.
By the medieval period the island had become a pilgrimage destination, with an annual fair held on St Herbert's feast day (13 April) that drew visitors from across the north of England. The fair was suppressed at the Reformation, along with the cult of Herbert himself, and the island passed into private hands. No physical remains of the hermitage or the medieval chapel survive above ground.
The island is accessible by private boat. It is not National Trust land and has no formal visitor facilities.
Derwent Island, the northernmost of the four, has a Georgian house built in the 1780s — Derwent Island House, a simple, elegant building that sits in the island's small garden looking south across the lake. The house and island are owned by the National Trust.
The National Trust opens the island to the public on five days per year, usually in spring and autumn. Visitor numbers are limited and tickets are allocated by ballot. The five open days are the only opportunity most people will have to land on the island, and the combination of the house, the garden and the lake views from every window makes the visit genuinely exceptional.
The island was bought in the 1780s by a Birmingham businessman named Joseph Pocklington, who built the house and then proceeded to decorate the island's landscape with a Druidical circle, a stone fort, a mock hermitage and a miniature naval battery. He also organised spectacular regattas on the lake, staged with theatrical lighting effects, that attracted crowds from across the north of England. Most of Pocklington's decorative additions have gone. The house remains.
Lord's Island, in the western middle of the lake, was the site of the summer residence of the Earls of Derwentwater — one of the great Catholic aristocratic families of the north of England. The house is entirely gone; only earthworks and foundations survive. The earldom is gone too, extinguished in 1716 when James Radcliffe, the third Earl, was beheaded on Tower Hill following his involvement in the Jacobite rising of 1715.
The Radcliffe family's story is one of the most dramatic in the Lake District. The first Earl had been a favourite of Charles II; the second Earl was a Jacobite supporter who managed to avoid direct involvement in the 1715 rising; the third Earl joined the Jacobite army, was captured at the Battle of Preston, tried for high treason and executed. His estates — including the island, the surrounding land and the mineral rights across much of Borrowdale — were forfeited to the Crown. The Greenwich Hospital Fund administered them for the next century, mining the Borrowdale graphite and plumbago that would supply the world's pencil industry.
The island is National Trust land but has no formal access arrangements.
The smallest of the four islands, Rampsholme lies in the eastern middle of the lake. It is entirely wooded, largely undisturbed and rarely mentioned in the context of the lake's history. Cormorants roost on its trees. In autumn, with the oak canopy turned gold, it is one of the finest elements in the view from Friar's Crag.
The Keswick Launch circular service passes all four islands on its route around the lake, and the commentary identifies each one. From the water the wooded profiles are distinct and the relationship between the islands becomes clear — their arrangement across the lake, the way they shift relative to each other as the vessel moves. From the shore at Friar's Crag, St Herbert's Island and Derwent Island are directly in the view south; Lord's Island is visible to the west.
The islands are part of the Derwentwater section on the 8 Lakes Morning Tour and 8 Lakes Afternoon Tour.