Lord Lonsdale has withdrawn Blencathra from the market. Photo: Bob Smith/grough

A campaigning charity that was set up to buy a Lake District mountain for the public will return all donations, it said.

The Friends of the Blencathra finally abandoned its quest to buy the fell, also known locally as Saddleback, in September.

The group was set up in 2014 after the mountain in the northern fells was put on the market by its ultimate owner the Earl of Lonsdale when he was hit with a large inheritance-tax bill.

The organisation gave up on the pursuit of owning the fell when the aristocrat said the land was no longer for sale as he had found another way of finding the money for HM Revenue and Customs.

The Friends were then saddled with the quandary of what to do with the numerous donations it had received during its appeal for cash to bid for the mountain. Accounts lodged with the Charity Commission show it has assets of almost £¼m.

Chairman Dave Wheeler announced that all donations will have to be refunded where trustees can identify the donor, adding it was a major task.

He said: “We are now in the process of estimating the additional costs that this will entail and whether we have the resources to manage the potentially substantial increase in the workload this could invoke.

“We also need to agree how administration costs will be allocated. The trustees will agree the best course of action and submit a proposal to the Charity Commission next week for approval.

“Once this is agreed we will initiate the three-month claim period for the return of donations.”

He said trustees had also been considering what to do with cash whose donors do not reclaim their money, or who relinquish their claims, and to which organisations the remaining money could be given.

Mr Wheeler said: “We will not be able to specify which charities this could include until we have submitted a cy-près scheme for agreement with the commission.”

A cy-près agreement allows for original trust documents to be amended where there original intent is not deemed feasible. It has to be as close to the aims of the charity as possible.

The Friends’ chairman said: “The timescale for submission of a cy-près scheme is following the three months from the start of the claim period in order to permit decisions to be made after it is clear what sort of amounts remain unclaimed, and available for allocation by the scheme.

“The application will need to reflect the use of funds specifically for ‘recreational and landscape conservation purposes which are both charitable and specifically within the Lake District’.

“This would rule out the air ambulance services and the National Trust for instance, as the remit could not be confined to the Lake District.”

Although Mr Wheeler said the Friends would not be making public who the remaining cash should go to until the three-month reclaim period has ended, the trustees would be exploring which organisations have potential projects suitable for donations.

Acclaimed fellwalker and writer Alfred Wainwright called Blencathra ‘the mountaineers’ mountain.’ The 868m (2,848ft) fell, prominent from the main A66 transpennine road, was also the subject of film-maker Terry Abraham’s recent release Blencathra: Life of a Mountain.