ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines how a cultural elite's perception of England's mountainous north shifted from empty space to culturally freighted place. It contextualizes this change within the dual social spheres of British nationalism and the Picturesque aesthetic. The chapter delineates through what cultural lenses Lake District landscapes were viewed, and how those views were promulgated in various media to actual and armchair tourists. Shifts in landscape aesthetics transformed perceptions of England's northern counties of Cumberland and Westmorland from desolate and culturally empty space to desirable culturally loaded place. The transformation of the northern counties was accomplished by the evolving articulation of two phenomena: the rise of British nationalism, and the popularization of the Picturesque aesthetic which valorized the vernacular, the native, and the Celtic.
