Dock Tarn
lake in the United Kingdom

Dock Tarn is a small tarn located within the Lake District National Park in Cumbria, England, at grid reference NY273143. It is situated on moorland at 400 metres above sea level near the summit of Great Crag, midway between Watendlath, the Stonethwaite valley and Borrowdale. It measures approximately 300 by 200 metres, and the shoreline is indented with rocky headlands and bays. There is a tiny island in the tarn with a few small Rowan trees growing on it. Many Lake District writers rate Dock Tarn and the walk to it very highly because of its quiet beauty.
The tarn can be reached from Watendlath by a 2.5 kilometre walk along a path that climbs very close to the summit of Great Crag; many walkers include the ascent of this fell in the outing. The approach from Stonethwaite is of a similar distance but is more arduous, going steeply through the deciduous woodland in the valley before following the stream of Willygrass Gill, which is the outflow of Dock Tarn.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Dock Tarn” is lake in the United Kingdom. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Dock, Tarn and lake, not as a finished interpretation.
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Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5287202. Authority coordinates are 54.519, -3.125. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dock Tarn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.