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Visiting Wordsworth country
Friday 1 September 2006
One of the highlights of our visit to the Lake District last week was paying homage to places where William Wordsworth lived. On the Saturday we visited Wordsworth House, Cockermouth, the poet’s childhood home. The National Trust acquired the house in 1938 when local people managed to prevent it being pulled down and to make way for a bus station. After passing out of the hands of the Wordsworth family it had been for some years a doctor’s surgery. The property was completely restored by the National Trust in 2004. The garden reaches down to the River Derwent.
Even more memorably, on the Tuesday, we visited Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth museum, run by the Wordsworth Trust (www.wordsworth.org.uk). Dove Cottage was Wordsworth’s home between 1799 and 1808, some of his most prolific and important years as a poet. Here, too, his sister Dorothy wrote her Grasmere Journals. Coleridge, Scott, Hazlitt and Southey visited the Wordsworths here. When the Wordsworths left the cottage, Thomas de Quincey moved in from 1809 to 1835. We were conducted around the cottage by a knowledgeable guide. The place is a popular pilgrimage for the Japanese and our party also included some Indians.
The Wordsworth museum, next door, run by the Wordsworth Trust, excellently features the poet’s life, puts some of his best poems in the context of his life and allows you to listen to them being read. Some good portraits are on long-term loan from the National Portrait Gallery.
We found the poorly sign-posted beginning of the Coffin Way which is a path between Dove Cottage and Rydal Mount. In the seventeenth century, the hamlet of Rydal had no church of its own. As a result hard-pressed pall-bearers had to carry lead coffins along a fifty minute walk to the nearest church at Grasmere. This turned out to be one of the loveliest paths we have ever walked along – on a south facing slope with views of Grasmere and Rydal Water and the mountains behind. We took a picnic lunch in a field with a glorious view.
Wordsworth never owned Rydal Mount, renting it from 1813 to his death in 1850 at the age of 80.
He was 43 when he moved in with his wife Mary and their three surviving children, John, Dora and William. While living here he held the position of Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland and this provided him with a steady income. In 1969, Mrs Mary Henderson, Wordsworth’s great, great granddaughter bought the house, restored it and returned many of his personal belongings, portraits, furniture and letters to the house where they originally belonged. For the first time the property was actually owned by a Wordsworth. The Wordsworths were all keen gardeners and William designed not only the beautifully situated four acres of garden at Rydal Mount – which has changed little since his day – but also the gardens of many of his friends and neighbours.
Walking back to Grasmere along the Coffin Way I saw the only red squirrel I have ever seen. After tea and the most delicious seed cake and cheese we visited the Wordsworth graves in Grasmere churchyard and explored the church.
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