WARWICK HALL - VERY PRIVATE, VERY SPECIAL, VERY BEAUTIFUL

The Beats on Warwick Hall Estate

Fishing at Warwick Hall is divided into two beats: Top Beat and Park Beat. Fishing tenants take a beat for the day, then alternate if they are fishing more than one day at a time.

Both beats are about a mile long, and share the quality fishing equally. Nick Marriner, the landlord, has changed the configuration of the beats in the past in order to keep a balance between the two. If the river changes structure again - as it does every year when the winter floods come down - he'll look at it again.

Today, the pools on the Top Beat are:

The Otterstone (yes, there are otters)

The House Pool

Gravel Bank

The Garden Pool

The Nunnery Pool

Coops Stream

The pools on the Park Beat are:

Crow Wood

Howard's Hole

The Battery Pool

Irthing Foot

Duffers

Jackie's

There are 2 good little fishing huts, one for each beat. Both are in the Park, one next to Howard's Hole for the benefit of Park Beat tenants, and the other next to Jackie's for fishermen on the Top Beat. Occasionally non-fishing guests at the Hall will come along to use the picnic facilities.

We're justly proud, I think, of the high standard of maintenance of the banks and amenities on the beats. Keeper Charlie Alderson sets high standards for himself (and for everyone else!) and the credit goes to him. He and Nick believe it adds enormously to the pleasure of a day's fishing to find well kept huts and carefully tended banks.

All the pools can be reached by car, with a short walk to the water. This allows a few long term tenants to continue to enjoy their sport as they head for their ninetieth birthday! Other tenants park and walk between pools.

There are 2 boats available for borrowing when the water is high and the pools are deep. You'll find the key in the Fishermen's Room at the main house - be careful to return it!

Excerpt from Fishing Huts, the Angler's Sancturary by Jo Orchard-Lisle, Excellent Press 2008

Top Beat Hut

The wooden shed looks out on Jackies Stream and Duffers , and further downstream there are pools called Loaf of Bread and Howards Hole. I always wonder where these names come from, and I suspect they derive from odd incidents like the one described on a certificate pinned to the wall of the hut, which relates the recent heroic effort by Hot Rod & Ghillie when they rescued a maiden who fell in the river. Another photo of men clad in waders is labelled 3 men in Incontinent Suits, and a poem caught my eye:

With arms outstretched throughout the day,

He tells of fish that got away,

And, after dinner, gaining strength

Both fish and stories grow in length.

A table with benches and comfortable armchairs all looked extremely neat and tidy. Outside, I met the gamekeeper, Charlie Alderson, who told me that the whole area around the hut had been flooded at the beginning of 2005, when Carlisle was also very badly affected.

Park Beat Hut

Another wooden hut furnished in the same way but made slightly more stylish by the addition of a verandah, and looking in remarkably good order, despite the fact that it, too, had been flooded up to its windows. Charlie told me. great improvements have been made: the river banks are carefully maintained, and steps were being installed in places for the more elderly fishermen.

On the chart of salmon caught since 1955, I saw that the most recent entry, for 2006, showed 201 fish with an average weight of 8.5 lbs. In 2000 a column had been started for fish returned, with 114 going back in 2006. It was also clear that until the 1960s the majority of fish were caught in the spring, but that now summer and autumn are the most prolific seasons. There were no records of other fish caught but I did learn that a Father and son caught 130 grayling in one day just below the hut.

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The Beats

WARWICK HALL - VERY PRIVATE, VERY SPECIAL, VERY BEAUTIFUL

The Beats on Warwick Hall Estate

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