Recently I’ve written several times about Lake District places associated with William Wordsworth, the great nineteenth century romantic poet. In addition to describing a visit to Wordsworth House in Cockermouth and seeing the tremendous work that has been done to recover from the devastating floods of November 2009, I posted a further article summarising the Wordsworth houses currently open to the public.

Hawkshead Grammar School

Wordsworth in Hawkshead

In the first of these there is the Hawkshead Grammar School. After the death of their mother William and his brother Richard attended the school here between 1779 and 1787. Ann Tyson’s cottage where they lodged survives, now used as a holiday cottage. The school ceased operating as such more than century ago. It is owned by a charitable trust and is open to the public. You can even see William’s name carved with a penknife, as was schoolboy practice, in the wood of a schoolroom desk.

Wordsworth and Penrith

Penrith was the home town of both the poet’s parents. His father John Wordsworth was the son of a lawyer and land agent who also farmed at nearby Sockbridge. John followed in his father’s footsteps (without the farming) and as quite a young man was appointed as Sir James Lowther’s agent in West Cumberland and so occupied the Lowther-owned house in Cockermouth, which in time became William’s birthplace as well as that of his sister Dorothy and their brothers. William’s mother, Anne Cookson, often brought her children from Cockermouth to stay with their grandparents William and Dorothy Cookson in their home on Borrowgate, sometimes for long periods, and some of the children’s early schooling was here. After Anne’s early death at the age of only thirty it was to Penrith that William would travel from Hawkshead to spend the school holidays, and later from Cambridge.

These two towns may be less associated with Wordsworth’s poetry than the later homes at Grasmere and Rydal, but nevertheless they form an important part of his early story.

This afternoon I was in the process of preparing another article on Wordsworth for after Christmas (Yes, occasionally I do manage to do things in advance!) when I came across a video of Jeremy Irons reading “Daffodils”.

I hadn’t planned on putting up anything new today but am sure that many of my readers here on Around-England will enjoy this. On a cold, damp winter’s day how good it is to be able to picture the golden flowers “tossing their heads in spritely dance”.

Wasn’t that good! Spring is only three months away. Or does that sentiment offend my friends who are lovers of snow-covered mountains? Yes, I agree, there’s beauty in all the seasons.

Video from YouTube

Wordsworth House, Cockermouth

“We’re going to the Wordsworth House this afternoon.” “Oh good. You’ll enjoy that. Which one?”

It’s easy to imagine that kind of conversation between Lake District visitors over a lunch table. Currently there are three houses with strong Wordsworth connections open to the public, and before long the three will be four.

Wordsworth House, Cockermouth

Starting with his earliest life there is Wordsworth’s birthplace, now known as Wordsworth House in Cockermouth. Their father was agent to Sir James Lowther who owned the rather splendid, then almost new, property on Cockermouth’s Main Street. The Wordsworths moved in around 1766. William was born in 1770, the second son in what would become a family of four boys and a girl, and lived there during his early childhood, but his mother died in 1778 when he was only eight years old, and his father five years later.

His early schooling was in Penrith, his mother’s home town, then at Hawkshead. Subsequently, after not very distinguished studies at Cambridge, Wordsworth for some years in his twenties moved around from place to place, including time in France and also Somerset. By 1799, though, he was back in the Lake District and made his home here for the the next fifty years.

Dove Cottage, Grasmere

Dove Cottage, Grasmere

Dove Cottage had previously been an inn known as the Dove and Olive Branch. Wordsworth joked at that as he referred to himself as a “water-drinking bard”. It is today owned by The Wordsworth Trust which has developed the area around not only as a visitor attraction but also as a major international centre for literary research associated with Wordsworth and the Lake Poets.

Rydal Mount

Eventually the demands of a growing family, not to mention the visitors such as Coleridge, Scott, Southey and deQuincey whom they so often entertained, made a move into more spacious accommodation inevitable. After a brief spell in another Grasmere house the family in 1810 moved down the road in the direction of Ambleside to a house by the next lake, Rydal Water.

Rydal Mount was home to Wordsworth for longer than any of the others. He lived there until his death in 1850. Rydal Mount, with its gardens, is now once again owned by members of the Wordsworth family who open it to the public.

Allan Bank, Grasmere

The above three houses are open to the public. But I mentioned a short stay in Grasmere after Dove Cottage. This was at Allan Bank, a house which Wordsworth had earlier condemned as ugly but which he later occupied for two years from 1808. This has been owned by the National Trust for many years but rented out to private tenants. Following a fire in March this year, however, the Trust now plans to renovate the property and open Allan Bank to the public with some kind of Wordsworth-related content (precisely what being as yet undecided), so making it the fourth Wordsworth house in Cumbria open to visitors.

[Updated from a 2008 post]
In addition to the lakes themselves there is a wide variety of things to do in the Lake District. There are places to visit ranging from the literary connections of Dove Cottage at Grasmere (home of the poet William Wordsworth) to the practicalities (although also with artistic potential) of the pencil and mining museums in Keswick. And don’t forget the National Park visitor centre at Brockhole.

The National Trust

has several properties in the region and if, either deliberately or due to hitting a bad patch of weather, you decide on a programme of indoor visits you could well benefit from joining the Trust rather than paying separately for each location. With your National Trust membership ticket you get free access to all its properties, which can be a considerable saving if you vist several – and remember, the membership lasts for a year so you’ll have access to properties in other parts of the country. If you live in England or Wales you may even be surprised at what’s available to visit almost on your own doorstep as well as in the Lake District.

The National Trust (which, incidentally, is not a government body; this is sometimes misunderstood because of its name) owns large areas of the countryside in the Lake District National Park. Apart from areas of water it owns many hill farms which are let out to tenant farmers who take good care of the landscape to protect it for future generations. It also owns houses and gardens of historic or other special interest. Here are just some of the National Trust properties you could visit while in Cumbria:

• Acorn Bank Garden and Watermill, Temple Sowerby, nr Penrith
• The Beatrix Potter Gallery, Hawkshead
• Sizergh Castle, nr Kendal
• Wordsworth House, Cockermouth (William Wordsworth’s birthplace)

This afternoon in the Cockermouth sunshine the confluence of the Cocker and the Derwent looked tranquil. On 19th November 2009 it was a very different picture. Record volumes of rainwater poured down the two rivers from the Lake District mountains and inundated the centre of this historic town.

Cockermouth - where the Rivers Cocker and Derwent meet - 9th August 2011

Parts of the town that day were under six to nine feet of water. One property affected was the poet William Wordsworth’s birthplace. National Trust staff hurriedly carried irreplaceable items up stairs to higher floors before eventually being compelled to leave to avoid being completely cut off by the rising water. Today the water level is marked on the wall of one room, just a few inches from the ceiling.

The Garden of the Wordsworth House, Cockermouth - 9th August 2011

Outside, the garden was completely swamped, plants and shrubs carried away by the force of the pounding water. But here it is today, above, looking toward the river with the new flood defences in the background, and below, looking toward the house. What a tremendous restoration job the staff and volunteers have done. Were the apple trees washed away and later replaced, or did they stand firm against the waters? I forgot to ask, but the apples on them looked incredibly tempting. (Yes, I resisted!)

The Garden at the Wordsworth House, Cockermouth, 9th August 2001

Inside the house all is to the standard one has come to expect of the National Trust. If I were to make just one criticism (but really, it pales almost into insignificance against the excellence of the work that has been done) it would be that I’d have benefited from a simple sheet of card somewhere in each room outlining the nature of the room and identifying its principal contents. In fairness, though, I had failed to take one of the guide cards from the entrance hall.

William and Dorothy Wordsworth’s Birthplace, Cockermouth – 9th August 2011

It feels almost unfair to have separated out for prime attention this one building. So many homes and businesses were torn apart by that 2009 flooding – but look at Cockermouth today. Great credit is due to the people of the town and to the authorities for such a splendid work of restoration – which in some parts still continues. Well done, Cockermouth.

More on Cockermouth

Cockermouth on the Around-England blog

The Lake District, West: Cockermouth

Ancient Mariner with Albatross

On Saturday we had a rather damp experience of the Quantock Hills until we arrived at Watchet harbour, when the sun came out to greet us. I’ll write more about Watchet later, but for now here is a picture of the statue in the harbour area. The Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived for several years not far from here, in Nether Stowey. His friends the Wordsworths, probably better known for their time in the Lake District at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, were also nearby at Alfoxton for a time. The statue is to commemorate the writing of Coleridge’s longest, and possibly greatest, poem “The Ancient Mariner” in which the mariner shoots a giant albatross (incidentally, wing span up to eleven feet) that was following his ship and is condemned to have it tied to his neck for life.

I sat down to write about the River Duddon, but something more emerged.

Recently I’ve been posting on Twitter a daily quotation from William Wordsworth, chiefly from his poetry.  The difficulty, though, is Twitter’s limitation to 140 characters.  It restricts one’s ability to do full justice to the bard.  Having started to write this morning I then thought it might be good to include here a few more extensive passages, and not only about the Duddon..

One of my most prized possessions is a leather-bound volume of “Wordsworth’s Poetical Works” inherited from my late mother. It was awarded to her in 1925 as the “Dorothy Fisher Memorial Prize” for “taking First Place in Form V” at Ulverston Victoria Grammar School. (There I go again, boasting my North Lonsdale/Cumbrian credentials, even though I’ve been away among the diaspora for more than sixty years). Well, down came the book from the shelf and this is what materialised.

Our poet was fascinated by the sound and sight of water. He loved the Cumbrian rivers. In Dungeon Ghyll Force (aka The Idle Shepherd Boys, 1800) he describes himself as;

A Poet, one who loves the brooks
Far better than the sages’ books.

At the commencement of one of his very early poems, An Evening Walk (1797), he recalls the shore of Derwent Water close to the Lodore Falls:

Far from my dearest friend, tis mine to rove
Through bare grey dell, high wood, and pastoral cove;
Where Derwent rests, and listens to the roar
That stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore …

And as he comes to the end of his walk,

The song of mountain streams, unheard by day,
Now hardly heard, beguiles my homeward way.

He loved the stream and the falls at Aira Force (sometimes Airey Force), near Ullswater. A day or two ago I tweeted (from The Somnambulist),

“At eve; how softly then doth Aira-force,
That torrent hoarse, speak from the woody glen!”

On another day though (in Airey-Force Valley, 1842)  all was quiet. He describes how against logic the noise of the rippling brook seems rather to amplify the silence than to break in upon it.

Not a breath of air
Ruffles the bosom of this leafy glen.
From the brook’s margin, wide around, the trees
Are steadfast as the rocks; the brook itself,
Old as the hills that feed it from afar,
Doth rather deepen than disturb the calm
Where all things else are still and motionless.

From childhood rivers had been in his blood. His father’s house in Cockermouth, now preserved by the National Trust, backs onto the River Derwent.  He wrote of these early years in The Prelude (1799-1805):

The fairest of all Rivers loved
To blend his murmurs with my nurse’s song,
And, from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flow’d along my dreams …..

He writes of swimming, fishing, boating in years long before “health and safety” considerations placed confining restrictions around much of centuries-old childhood exploration.

His poetry visits many rivers, not only in his native Lake District. The Thames, for example, gets its share of attention.

Glide gently, thus for ever glide, O Thames …

But the streams of his northern home take first place. Last weekend the BBC programme Countryfile visited the Duddon Valley, which Wordsworth had known since boyhood and which, until the 1974 creation of Cumbria, formed the boundary between Cumberland and Lancashire. Without doubt this was one of his favourite Lake District rivers.

Relaxing at leisure one evening in Ulpha churchyard he sees

… distant moonlit mountains faintly shine,
Soothed by the unseen River’s gentle roar.

Those words are taken from his 1820 series of twenty-four sonnets to The River Duddon. Here are more.

Pure flow the verse, pure, vigorous, free, and bright,
For Duddon, long-loved Duddon, is my theme!

… Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide.

And as it reaches the estuary, the once roaring torrent, then gliding stream, is about to flow into the Irish Sea. He watches its

… radiant progress toward the Deep
Where mightiest rivers into powerless sleep
Sink, and forget their nature – now expands
Majestic Duddon, over smooth flat sands
Gliding in silence with unfettered sweep!

Past the Dunnerholme promontary to the south, watched over by Black Combe from the north, the Duddon, once “tumultuous”, flows smoothly on and, likening it to the end course of a redeemed human life, Wordsworth sees it as

Prepared, in peace of heart, in calm of mind
And soul, to mingle with Eternity!

For an affordable copy of “The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth“ from Amazon.co.uk, click on the title.

Many years ago I started to collect postcards, both old and new. Lake District postcards were a part of that. From time to time I go back to it.  Recently I was looking at an album containing several cards of Dove Cottage, Grasmere which 200 years ago was the home of the poet William Wordsworth.  Here are two of the cards.

On this first one the postmark is not totally clear, but it is a Milton “ARTLETTE” card, a tinted photograph, posted in either 1900 or 1906.

Interestingly, the message on the back commences with, “We passed this cottage yesterday but could not afford to pay the 6d each to go in.”  It sounds very much like what you might hear from someone nowadays after a week of paying admission charges for one place after another – although I have to say that today’s charges at Dove Cottage are not unreasonable.

The second card is by Abraham’s of Keswick (no.229 in their series) and was posted in 1909.  Again it is a tinted photograph and views the house from a different angle.

It was in 1799 that William Wordsworth brought his family to live at Dove Cottage, and it was in this house not far from the lake at Grasmere that much of his greatest poetry was written.  It was here also that his sister Dorothy wrote her famous journals.

Other eminent poets and writers of the early/mid-19th century had a connection with Dove Cottage. Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were among the Wordsworths’ many visitors.  After the Wordsworths left in 1808 Thomas de Quincey lived there for many years.

The cottage and surrounding buildings now constitute an internationally important centre for literary research. The great majority of the original William Wordsworth manuscripts, in fact over 90% of those known to have survived, are now in the possession of the Wordsworth Trust which owns the Dove Cottage properties.

Major exhibitions are staged which are  open to the public in addition to the house itself, while the main document collection is accessible to accredited researchers by arrangement.  As with most Lake District venues, Dove Cottage is open around the year but check the web site for details, especially in winter when opening times may change.