Dove Cottage facts for kids
Dove Cottage is a special house located near the village of Grasmere in the beautiful Lake District of England. It's most famous for being the home of the well-known poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy Wordsworth. They lived here from December 1799 to May 1808, spending over eight years in this cozy cottage. During this time, William wrote many of his most famous poems, including "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" and "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (also known as "Daffodils").
William Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson in 1802. Mary and her sister joined the Wordsworths at Dove Cottage. Their family quickly grew with three children born in just four years. Because the cottage became too small, the Wordsworths moved out in 1808 to find a bigger home. After they left, another writer, Thomas De Quincey, lived there for several years. Later, different families rented the cottage.
In 1890, a group called the Wordsworth Trust bought Dove Cottage. They opened it to the public as a writer's home museum in 1891. The house still looks much like it did when Wordsworth lived there. It's considered a very important historical building. The site also has the Jerwood Centre, which holds old writings, books, and art, and a museum that opened in 1981.
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The Cottage's Early Days
Dove Cottage was built a long time ago, in the early 1600s. It was located right next to the main road that connected Ambleside in the south to Keswick in the north. It was probably built to be a public house, which is like an old-fashioned pub or inn. The first record of it, from 1617, calls it the "Dove and Olive." It stayed a public house, sometimes called the "Dove and Olive Branch," until it closed in 1793. William Wordsworth even mentioned its history in his 1806 poem, "The Waggoner."
The building is made from local stone, with walls painted white and a roof made of slate. It has four rooms downstairs and four rooms upstairs. The downstairs rooms still have the original oak panels and slate floors. These features were common in well-built houses in the Lake District during that time, especially for rooms where people would gather and drink. The fireplaces were changed in the 1790s to burn coal instead of the traditional local peat.
Wordsworth's Time at Dove Cottage
William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth in Cumberland in 1770. He knew the Lake District very well from his childhood. He left to study at the University of Cambridge in 1787 and then traveled around Britain and Europe for 12 years.
William first saw Dove Cottage in 1799 while on a walking trip in the Lake District with his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. William had been very close to his sister Dorothy when they were children, but they had lived apart for many years. Even though they had lived together in other places, William wanted to find a permanent home for them. Dove Cottage was empty and available to rent. They moved in on December 20, 1799, paying £5 a year to the owner.
On the ground floor, the main living room was called the "houseplace" or "kitchen-parlour." It was by the main door and had a cooking area and a window seat. This room was used for their main daily meals. A smaller room next to it was used as Dorothy's bedroom. There was a separate kitchen for harder cooking tasks. The fourth room was a small buttery, used for storing food. The Wordsworths hired a neighbor, Molly Fisher, as a maid to help with washing and cooking.
Upstairs, the room above the houseplace was William's study. From here, he had lovely views over the meadows to the lake. William used this room for writing his poems and sometimes for light meals or entertaining guests. The other three rooms upstairs were used as bedrooms. The small room above the buttery later became a nursery for William and Mary's children. In 1800, the walls of this small bedroom were covered with newspapers to help keep it warm. There was no running water inside the house, and the toilet was outside in the garden. William and Dorothy especially loved the garden and orchard behind the house. They called it their "little nook of mountain-ground" and kept it looking natural and "wild."
William became an important part of a group of Romantic poets in the Lake District, who were later known as the Lake Poets. Robert Southey lived nearby in Keswick. Southey and Coleridge were married to sisters. Coleridge also moved his family to Keswick in 1800. Both Coleridge and Southey often visited Dove Cottage. The Wordsworths also welcomed other famous visitors like Walter Scott, Humphry Davy, and Charles and Mary Lamb.
William Wordsworth's money situation had been difficult since his father died in 1783. But it got better in 1802 when some old debts owed to his father were finally paid. Because of this, William was able to marry Mary Hutchinson, a friend from his childhood, later that year. Dove Cottage became their first home as a married couple. William's sister Dorothy and Mary's sister Sara also lived with them. William and Mary's first three children were born in the cottage: John (1803), Dora (1804), and Thomas (1806).
Dorothy kept a wonderful journal during the years the family lived at Dove Cottage. This journal was published in 1897 as The Grasmere Journal. It gives us a close look at the family's daily life and their visitors. William often found ideas for his poems in Dorothy's journal. For example, an entry from 1802 about daffodils near Ullswater inspired his famous poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" in 1804.
Dove Cottage eventually became too small for the Wordsworths' growing family and their many visitors. They moved to Allan Bank in Grasmere in May 1808. William had not liked this house when it was first built. They moved again in 1810 to the Old Rectory in the center of Grasmere. Finally, in 1813, they moved to a much larger home called Rydal Mount. This house was a few miles south, just outside Ambleside. The Wordsworths rented Rydal Mount for 46 years, until Mary's death in 1859. William had passed away nine years earlier. Rydal Mount was bought in 1969 by Mary Henderson, who was William's great-great-granddaughter. It is still owned by the Wordsworth family and has been open to the public since 1970.
After the Wordsworths
Thomas De Quincey, a friend of the Wordsworths, moved into Dove Cottage in 1809, the year after the Wordsworths left. He had often stayed with them since 1807 and greatly admired William Wordsworth. De Quincey married a local farmer's daughter and lived in the cottage until 1820. He upset the Wordsworth family by making changes to Dove Cottage and, more importantly, to its garden. As his family grew, he had to move to Fox Ghyll. However, he continued to rent Dove Cottage and store his books there until 1835. Eventually, money problems forced him to leave the cottage for good.
After De Quincey, many different people rented Dove Cottage. The name "Dove Cottage" was first officially recorded in the 1851 census. In the 1860s, the house had a sign that said "Dixon’s Lodgings: Wordsworth’s Cottage." In the late 1880s, Edmund Lee bought the cottage. He was a writer and wrote the first biography of Dorothy Wordsworth while living there. His son, also named Edmund, was a novelist and poet.
The Wordsworth Trust bought the cottage for £650 in 1890. The Trust was started by Reverend Stopford Brooke specifically to protect this important place, which was so connected to Wordsworth's writings. The cottage kept the name "Dove Cottage" after the Trust bought it.
Dove Cottage Today
The Wordsworth Trust has kept Dove Cottage open to the public since July 1891. The cottage still looks much like it did when the Wordsworths lived there. The Trust has also brought the garden back to the "wild" look that the Wordsworths preferred. As a popular tourist attraction, Dove Cottage welcomes about 70,000 visitors each year.
In 2020 and 2021, the Wordsworth Grasmere site underwent a big "reimagining" project. Besides fixing up the cottage, the project added new activities at the museum, new outdoor areas to explore, and a new café.
A stone from Dove Cottage is even included in the Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, Walk of Fame. This special path has stones from places linked to famous people.
Wordsworth Museum
The Wordsworth Museum is right next to Dove Cottage. It displays old writings, landscape paintings, and portraits. It started in 1935 in a small converted barn and was opened by the Poet Laureate, John Masefield. The museum moved to a nearby coach house in 1981. The Jerwood Centre, a new building that won awards, was opened near Dove Cottage in 2005 by the poet and Nobel Prize winner, Seamus Heaney. This center holds the collections of the Wordsworth Trust. It also has a café and gift shop that opened in 2021 after being updated by Purcell (architects) and Nissen Richards Studio.
See also
- Grade I listed buildings in Cumbria
- Listed buildings in Lakes, Cumbria
