Bars are very important in providing a place where people can meet and make friends. People who enjoy a drink in a local bar are happier and have more friends. They are more likely to be engaged in conversations in small community pubs, and social skills improve after a drink.

    Professor Robin Dunbar of Oxford University said, “Friendship and communities are probably the two most important factors influencing our health and well-being. Making and maintaining friendships is something that has to be done in the real world. The digital world is simply no substitute(n.替代物). Given the increasing tendency for our social life to be on the Internet rather than in real life, having relaxed, accessible places where people can meet old friends and make new ones becomes even more necessary.”

    Tim Page, chief executive of CAMRA, said, “Bars offer a social environment to enjoy a drink with friends in a responsible community setting. The role of community bars in ensuring well-being cannot be overstated. For that reason, we all  need to do what we can to ensure that everyone has a ‘local' near to where they live or work.”

    Bars have long been part of British society and have played a key role in British social life since the 16th century. Bars came to represent the heart and soul of a community, providing both a place of entertainment and an engine for community bonding. In a world before the arrival of the motor car, the bar provided a venue in which people could get friendships and a sense of community.

    But the closing decades of the 20th century witnessed major changes in both the style of bars (for example, themed bars) and their numbers. As of 2015, the number of bars declines sharply, with bars continuing to close at an average rate of 29 a week.

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Welcome to Holker Hall & Gardens

Visitor Information

How to Get to Holker

    By Car： Follow brown signs an A590 from J36, M6. Approximate travel times: Windermere-20 minutes, Kendal-25 minutes, Lancaster-45 minutes, Manchester-1 hour 30 minutes.

    By Rail: The nearest station is Cark-in-Cartmel with trains to Carnforth, Lancaster Preston for connections to major cities & airports.

Opening Times

    Sunday-Friday (closed on Saturday)11:00 am-4:00 pm,30^th March-2nd November.

Admission Charges

Special Events

Producers' Market    13th April

    Join us to taste a variety of fresh local food and drinks. Meet the producers and get some excellent recipe ideas.

Holker Garden Festival    30th May

    The event celebrate its 22^nd anniversary with a great show of the very best of gardening, making it one of the most popular events in gardening.

National Garden Day    28th August

    Holker once again opens its gardens in aid of the disadvantaged. For just a small donation you can take a tour with our garden guide.

Winter Market    8th November

    This is an event for all the family. Wander among a variety of shops selling gifs while enjoying a live music show and nice street entertainment.

    “We all know that exercise is good for us, but can you get the benefits without actually doing the exercise?” asks Michael Mosley.

    Having a hot bath or a sauna is a good way to soothe your limbs after exercise, but what happens if you do it instead of exercise? Dr. Steve Faulkner of Loughborough University asked me to take part in an experiment comparing the relative benefits of having a long, hot bath versus an hour of hard pedalling.

    For this study I join a group of volunteers who have all been fitted with monitors which continuously record blood sugar levels. Keeping your blood sugar levels within the normal range is an important measure of your “metabolic” fitness.

    The first part of the experiment is very relaxing, consisting of having a long, hot bath. While I sit in the bath, which they keep at 40℃, Steve closely monitors my core temperature. Once it has risen and stayed there, I am allowed out.

    A couple of hours after my bath I have a light meal. Since we want to see how having a hot bath compares with exercise we repeat the experiment.

    So what's the result?

    “One of the first things that we were looking at,” Steve says, “is the energy expenditure while you're in the bath and what we found was an 80% increase in energy expenditure just as a result of sitting in the bath for the course of an hour.”

    This is nothing like as many calories as cycling for an hour (which comes out at an average of 630 calories) but we do burn 140 calories, the equivalent of a brisk 30-minute walk.

    A new algorithm(演算法)raises parking rates in busy neighborhoods and lowers them elsewhere, guaranteeing free parking spots regardless of location, Christopher Intagliata reports.

    If you drive in a city, you've no doubt experienced the headache of circling block after block, cruising for parking. But scientists who study that phenomenon have a solution to free up more spots: “You make them more expensive, so people have to decide whether to park farther away and Pay less, or closer and pay more.”Itzhak Benenson, a system scientist at Tel Aviv University.

    San Francisco has piloted a program that raises parking rates based on demand—and it's been shown to reduce cruising. But the sensors required for those systems can cost millions of dollars to install and operate, Benenson says. So instead, writing in IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine, he and his colleague Nir Fulman describe an algorithm that can determine smart pricing, without the use of sensors.

    They tested it on the Israeli city of Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv. First, they divide the city into zones. They estimate the parking demand in each zone, by calculating the number of apartments and offices there. Then they take account of parking supply in the area, along with how wealthy potential parkers might be. Using that data, the algorithm suggested pricing for each zone that would guarantee a 90-percent occupancy rate of parking spots city-wide. Meaning 10 percent of spots were always available to drivers willing to pay the price, regardless of neighborhood.

    Of course, not everyone will agree that raising parking prices will reduce the press of parking. Last time Benenson proposed hiking rates for city residents? “I got about 100 reactions on the web and 99 of them that said they have never heard such a stupid statement from the professors, and I should be punished and fired.”

    Eventually, he says, it'll be up to cities themselves to estimate their residents'political appetites for an easier parking spot.

    Since so much written language we see today comes from a glowing screen, language has begun to change through our interaction with technology. Social media and the Internet have had a rapid and great effect on the English language, and not necessarily for the better. More and more people have found themselves writing in pieces of words and using unclear acronyms(单词首字母) both in written and spoken language.

    How many times have you typed "LOL" in response to a humorous message? Referred to someone as your "BFF"? Exclaimed, "OMG!" during a particularly shocking event? Social media has affected the words we use in our everyday life. Abbreviations and acronyms commonly known as "text talk" have made their way into both spoken and written language. These are becoming increasingly popular as people struggle for brief expressions to meet word limits on social media like Weibo and Twitter. In addition, the speed of the Internet means language is changing faster than ever. You no longer have to be published through physical and traditional means to bring word trends to public attention.

    Many people believe the overuse of these new terms is a passing trend, and nobody will be using them in just a couple of decades. With the change of language, older terms will surely disappear and fall out of style, and newer and more Internet language will take their place.

    But the Oxford English Dictionary thinks the contrary. In 2011, a lot of Internet terms including, "LOL," "BPB," "OMD," and "BFF" were added to the dictionary, making these acronyms official parts of the English language. According to the dictionary writers, these terms aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

    The words you use in everyday life are a reflection of yourself; this is especially true on the Internet with the lack of interaction in real life. With the Internet and social media rapidly getting popular, soon your words may be all you have left. Make them good ones.

Scientists have long thought about whether each animal species has a different language, much like different human languages that we cannot understand. Language experts agree on the fact that the way animals communicate through various calls does not fit the definition of human languages.

Animal calls are not considered a language because the calls are limited to signals related to food activities, warning about the presence of enemies and so on. They lack the characteristic of productivity that all human languages share. That is — humans create new expressions every day by combining different words to express meanings. Animal calls are fixed in their meanings, while human language goes further and includes expressions of complex ideas that do not have a limit.

However, animals do communicate. People who study humans believe that people speak with their entire bodies. To express a message, one does not always need words. Have you ever shared a private joke with your friends across the table? All you did was to give them a self-satisfied smile, Animals can communicate in much the same way as humans do. Although animals do not have the ability to speak words, they can use other methods, such as gestures, movements, calls and their sense of smell. In short, most of their communication is not related with speech.

If animals can make noises, why can't they talk? Humans and animals both have the necessary organs that produce sounds, such as lungs, throat, voice box, lips and tongue. But the differences lie in the movement and relative position of these organs that make it possible for us to speak.

When humans developed from apes, a lot of our features were improved to better shape sounds along the way. The mouth started getting smaller and the neck grew longer. All other animals, including our closest animal relatives — chimpanzees, have little similarity, which determines humans' ability to speak.