William Wordsworth was born the second of five children on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, a small Cumbria market village some 40km northwest of Grasmere. He spent his youth wandering the vast wild open of the Lake District and grew a sentimental, almost romantic attachment and attraction to its formidable contours. So, Wordsworth may have left his humble hometown to pursue an education at the University of Cambridge in 1787 and subsequently to tour Europe with his muse and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but his heart never left the Lakes and its haunting, visceral landscapes.
It was while touring his old homelands with Coleridge in 1799 that Wordsworth discovered Grasmere. He was instantly enamoured and quickly purchased an old public house (inn) called the “Dove and Olive” into which he moved with his beloved sister Dorothy. This is today known as Dove Cottage. Wordsworth would call this small stone building, originally constructed in the 17th century, home for the next eight years of his life, regularly holding literary symposiums with Coleridge and fellow literary prodigy Thomas de Quincey here, also writing some of his most influential works, including “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” and extracts of his autobiographical epic The Prelude.
Today, Dove Cottage is a nationally-famous tourist sight, bringing in some 70,000 curious visitors each year. As well as being a gorgeous Grade I-listed building, the cottage now operates as a sort of living museum, the interiors curated to give a vivid impression of what day-to-day life would have been like for Wordsworth and his guests. The beautiful fellside gardens, where William and sister Dorothy spent much of their time, are also open to the public, maintained in the half-wild state that Wordsworth and Dorothy kept it in so that it could become their “little domestic slip of mountain.”
In 2020, the Wordsworth Trust also opened the Wordsworth Museum to help further display their leading collection of Romantic manuscripts, letters, and artefacts, composed of some 60,000 individual items. The new museum features interactive displays on Wordsworth’s life and influence in the area and provides a breathtaking viewing platform over the Grasmere Vale.