St Patrick's Church - Patterdale
More Articles in the Grasmere to Patterdale subsection
St Patrick’s Church in Patterdale, with its ancient living yew.
Patterdale Church, Patterdale - Coast to Coast
Patterdale is a small Lakeland village that serves as a favoured overnight stop for Coast to Coast walkers between Grisedale Tarn and Angle Tarn. Its parish church, St Patrick’s, stands at the heart of the valley and is now a single benefice within the diocese. The present building dates from 1853, replacing a 14th-century chapel that once occupied the same site.
St Patrick’s was long celebrated for the Patterdale Yews that grew on a raised mound within the churchyard. These ancient trees were said to be around a thousand years old when a violent snowstorm in 1883 brought them down. Their roots still lie beneath the mound, where new growth continues to sprout.
Patterdale village lies just south of Ullswater, offering access to a wide circuit of eastern fells within Patterdale parish and the Martindale valley beyond. The Coast to Coast Path passes east of the village on its ascent by Angle Tarn, High Street, Kidsty Pike, and onward to Haweswater.
St Patrick's Church Patterdale
St Patrick’s Church gives its name to Patterdale — originally St Patrick’s Dale — after the Welsh-born saint who escaped Irish captivity and later returned as a missionary bishop. Tradition holds that he preached here in the 5th century, converting the local tribes. The present church and graveyard stand near the site of his reputed oratory, beneath the rising flanks of Place Fell.
The Patterdale Yew, St Patrick’s
This grassy, stone-walled mound marks the site of the great Patterdale Yew — once the largest and oldest of the churchyard trees. Believed to have stood for around a thousand years, it was felled during a severe snowstorm in 1853. Its roots still lie beneath the mound, linking the modern church to its early Christian past.
Ann MacBeth Embroidery – The Nativity
This embroidery, The Nativity, is one of several works by Ann MacBeth once preserved at St Patrick’s Church, Patterdale. It is now permanently stored at the Glasgow Museum. A celebrated artist of the Glasgow School of Art, she moved to Patterdale in 1920, settling in Wordsworth Cottage near the church. There she created embroidered church hangings, altar frontals, and vestments, as well as designing china, rugs, and stained glass.
Her work represents a fusion of the Arts and Crafts ideal with religious symbolism, each piece made entirely by hand with intricate needlework and subtle dyes. Visitors to St Patrick’s can still see her original stitchwork glowing in the subdued light of the nave, a tribute to the quiet skill of an artist who found peace and purpose in Patterdale’s pastoral calm.
The Patterdale Yew, St Patrick’s
MacBeth embroidered the communion frontal for Glasgow Cathedral, but it is here in St Patrick’s that her later works remain — pieces such as The Nativity and The Good Shepherd, blending artistry, faith, and local devotion in thread and colour.
The Nativity, embroidery by Ann MacBeth (c. 1920s), now part of the Glasgow Museums Collection. Image courtesy of Glasgow Life Museums © Glasgow Museums / Glasgow City Council.
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