AbstractThe south‐eastern part of the Lake District was glaciated almost entirely by local ice. The valleys show many typical features: cirques, cirque tarns, valley‐heads, U‐shaped troughs with over‐steepened sides, and change of slope above the maximum glacier‐ice level, hanging valleys, valley‐steps, rock barriers, paternoster lakes, rock‐basins, ice spillways, and a large variety of moraines, drumlins and roches moutonnés. The glaciers from Grasmere and Langdale converged on Windermere and there produced the northern rock‐basin. Ice spillways into the Kent and Winster valleys resulted in the shallow central part of the present lake. The addition of ice from the Esthwaite glacier produced the southern rock‐basin. The glacier moved southwards by Cartmel, but the present fluvial drainage follows Backbarrow Gorge to th