Alfred Wainwright
English walker and writer
Alfred Wainwright MBE (17 January 1907 – 20 January 1991), who preferred to be known as A. Wainwright or A.W., was an English fellwalker, guidebook author and illustrator. His seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, published between 1955 and 1966 and consisting entirely of reproductions of his manuscript, has become the standard reference work to 214 of the fells of the English Lake District. Among his 40-odd other books is the first guide to the Coast to Coast Walk, a 182-mile (293-kilometre) long-distance footpath devised by Wainwright which remains popular today.
Life
Alfred Wainwright was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, into a family which was relatively poor, mostly because of his stonemason father's alcoholism. He did very well at school (first in nearly every subject) although he left at the age of 13. While most of his classmates were obliged to find employment in the local mills, Wainwright started work as an office boy in Blackburn Borough Engineer's Department. He spent several years studying at night school, gaining qualifications in accountancy which enabled him to further his career at Blackburn Borough Council. Even when a child Wainwright walked a great deal, up to 20 miles (32 kilometres) at a time; he showed a great interest in drawing and cartography, producing his own maps of England and his local area.
In 1930, at the age of 23, Wainwright saved up for a week's walking holiday in the Lake District with his cousin Eric Beardsall. They arrived in Windermere and climbed the nearby Orrest Head, where Wainwright saw his first view of the Lakeland fells.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q186795. VIAF identifies the subject as 114358860. The Library of Congress control number is n50021362. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1907, 1991, 1955 and 1966.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alfred Wainwright” 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.