An extra work of art has been added to an historic exhibition in Grasmere.
A painting by William Heaton Cooper of The Langdale Pikes seen from Lingmoor is back on home territory as part of a display the Heaton Cooper archive gallery.
It’s been added to the exhibition of mountaineering history which includes a bronze plaque listing all 20 names of the members of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club who served – and died – in the First World War.
The painting is owned by the FRCC and is on loan to the gallery, from its usual home at the club’s climbing hut in Wasdale.
William Heaton Cooper, like his father Alfred before him, and his son Julian Cooper, was a notable painter of Lakeland landscapes. He also provided the illustrations for many of the early guidebooks published by the FRCC.
The memorial plaque was, for many years, set into the summit cairn on Great Gable, the seventh highest mountain in the Lakes.
The exhibition is to mark the centenary of a campaign to buy Great Gable for the nation as a memorial to the 20 climbers who died in the conflict. FRCC member Herbert Cain said publicly: “Let’s buy a fell.’’
The FRCC subsequently raised the funds to buy 3,000 acres of fell land and gave it to the National Trust. The memorial plaque was unveiled on Whit Sunday, 1924, and remained on the summit until July 2013 when members of the Royal Engineers brought it down for re-casting, and put a new one in its place.
The plaque commemorates the 20 FRCC members who went to war and who were all killed in action. They included Seigfried Herford who’s known for one of the most outstanding achievements in British rock climbing, the first ascent of Central Buttress on Scafell.
William Heaton Cooper’s exquisite drawings of the Lakeland crags were used in the FRCC guides for 50 years from the 1930s onwards. The books were definitive guides for the climbing community, showing new routes as they were developed, drawn on site and working closely with the climbers at the crag face.
The exhibition, which is free, is open daily here at the gallery in Grasmere and runs until May.