Stock Ghyll

Its course turns first south-westerly then westerly, at which point it enters woodland and descends 70 feet in a waterfall called Stockghyll Force.

[8][9] Stockghyll Force, about half a mile east of Ambleside town centre, is a waterfall in a series of cascades totalling 70 feet in height.

The falls are surrounded by woodland composed of mixed trees in which beech predominates;[11] in spring many daffodils can be seen at the bottom.

[12] Thomas West's pioneering Guide to the Lakes (1778) advises tourists to visit Stockghyll Force on account of its "singular beauty and distinguished features" even in dry seasons.

[13] Joseph Budworth devoted a chapter of his A Fortnight's Ramble to the Lakes in Westmoreland, Lancashire, and Cumberland (1792) to Stockghyll Force.

[15]William Wordsworth, writing in 1835, recommended visitors to Ambleside to spend three minutes looking at the course of Stock Ghyll through the village, adding that "Stockgill-force, upon the same stream, will have been mentioned to you as one of the sights of the neighbourhood".

[30] Though the influential writer William Gilpin, apostle of the picturesque, condemned Stock Ghyll Force as "the most unpicturesque we could have", others differed.

[32] More recently, Jeremy Gardiner's Stockghyll Force (2011) forms part of a series of paintings of Lake District waterfalls.