The lake is 1.2 miles (2 km) east of the village of Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe in North Yorkshire, England.

It is thought to be fed by an underground spring and drained by a limestone channel[5] so the water finds a way out through the base of the cliff face to the east of the lake.

[9] When an ice sheet pushed its way between the Pennines and the North York Moors, it bulldozed the soft earth away and carved the cliffs at Whitestone and in turn the mud left over stopped the water's egress and formed the glacial lake.

[13] The lake is the setting of several myths; one being of a knight known as Sir Harry Scriven who conned the Abbot of Rievaulx Abbey into letting him ride his horse (a white mare, the so called derivation of White Mare Cliff (another name for Whitestonecliff)).

The abbot then changed into the devil, which caused such panic in the knight that he couldn't stop the horse and himself plunging into Gormire Lake from the clifftop.