William and Dorothy Wordsworth

William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came to live in Town End, Grasmere in 1799. Two years earlier William, accompanied by his brother John and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had stayed at Robert Newton's Inn for several days during a walking tour of the Lake District. For William Wordsorth it was the start of an association that was to last until the present day. Robert Newtons¹ Inn no longer exists, but the building remains and now houses the National Trust bookshop.

The Wordsworth family lived in three separate houses in the village from 1799 until moving to Rydal Mount in 1813. Throughout that 14 year period Wordsworth married, sired five children and adopted another and produced much of his finest literary work.

Many sites in Grasmere have associations with Wordsworth. As well as Dove Cottage , he also lived at Allan Bank on the west side of the village, and later at the Old Parsonage, opposite St Oswald's church.
The small but well populated churchyard is the last resting place of several members of Wordsworth's family - the poet and his wife, the young son and daughter lost in 1872, their first child Dora, her husband and his son, and Williams sister Dorothy.

Although he is known as the greatest of all romantic poets there was much more to Wordsworth than wonderful poetry. In 1808 he published a guide book to the Lakes, extolling the virtues of the unspoilt landscape.

Ironically he was also an early environmentalist, and feared the effect that large numbers of visitors might have on the landscape around him. He sometimes deputised for the local schoolmaster, teaching the local children including his own sons and daughter at the village school that is now Grasmere gingerbread shop.

It was not only William that provided future generations with a rich literary legacy. Dorothy Wordsworth kept a diary for much of their time at Dove Cottage in which she recorded everyday events in extraordinary detail. Now published as the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, they provide the modern generation with a fascinating glimpse into the world that the Wordsworth's inhabited, and are surely one of the finest social documents ever written.

Nowadays Dove Cottage is a museum, and an excellent starting point for those wishing to learn more about the life and times of England's greatest poet.

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Lakes Artists Exhibition

Each year from the end of July to the beginning of September at Grasmere Village Hall is the Lake Artists Society Summer Exhibition, where some 300 exhibits by local artists and sculptors are on display. The Lake Artists Society was founded in 1904 largely on the initiative of W.G. Collingwood, the well known artist and local historian, and secretary to John Ruskin.

The landscape of Cumbria is the source for the work of many members, however a wide range of subject matter and media is to be found in the exhibitions.