Hawkshead Conservation Area

Why is Hawkshead special?

Hawkshead is a small historic town of exceptional character, with few parallels in the UK, deserving to be considered one of the country’s top conservation areas. It’s attractive architectural and historic character includes:

• An historic core that is largely untouched by twentieth century development, resulting from informal organic growth and plot infilling as well as from formal town planning
• Consisting of a tangle of narrow streets, squares, yards and alleys (ginnels) that thread between a closely packed jumble of houses, inns, shops, outhouses and civic buildings
• Some with upper storeys that form bridges across the street, some built so closely together that the footpaths are only just wide enough for humans and pack animals to pass
• Many with archways to the street that lead to long cobbled yards with back buildings of a kind that many other towns once had but that have now been lost to redevelopment
• Resulting in a town that is built to a human scale, both in terms of buildings and the spaces in between, with little motorised traffic
• Surrounded by green fields that serve as a buffer, protecting the town from intrusive modern development; but with some good examples of modern design (Red Lion Yard) that take their architectural theme from the town’s older buildings
• Married to a thriving tourism, hospitality and retail sector that successfully co-exist with the historic town.