JAMES GRASBY: Welcome to the National Trust podcast.
I'm James Grasby and I'm a curator with the National Trust
with a portfolio of houses in Herefordshire and
Worcestershire.
And the Daily life of a curator is looking after things as
diverse as library ladders and portraits.
These places are knowledgeable witnesses if you like to things
that have been seen and heard by them and in this group of
podcasts, we'll be delving into the stories, plays books and
characters that make each of these places so special.
So join me on this journey and immerse yourself in the wonders
of the National Trust. "
PETER COLQUITT: I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on
high or vales and hills. When all at once, I saw a crowd, a
host of golden Daffodils beside the lake beneath the trees,
fluttering and dancing in the breeze."
JAMES GRASBY: That was the opening verse of one of the
nation's favorite poems. I wandered lonely as a cloud,
written by William Wordsworth and read by Peter Colquitt, a
volunteer tour guide with the National Trust. The poem
describes a gorgeous scene in the Lake District where I am
now.
I've just come through the streets of Grasmere, a small
Cumbrian Town where Wordsworth lived and wrote.
Wordsworth described the place as the loveliest spot that man
hath ever found. Wordsworth lived in a number of houses in
the Cumbria area.
But in this episode, we'll be exploring the two now managed by
the National Trust Wordsworth House where he grew up and Allan
Bank where he lived with family and friends.
But before we start exploring, I'm meeting Jeff Cowton. I'm
hoping to learn a bit more about Wordsworth's life and writing.
JEFF COWTON: Wordsworth living to be 80, about 70 of those 80
years, he would think of the Lake District as his home.
And from the very early days of being a child in Cockermouth
where he tells us later that the sound of the River Derwent was
one of his earliest natural influences.
He tells us later, these were the great influences on his
life. Nature was his teacher and it was in the Lake District that
these early formative experiences took place. "
PETER COLQUITT: Fair seed time had my soul and I grew up
fostered alike by beauty and by fear much favoured in my
birthplace."
JEFF COWTON: He thought that the world of nature was the great
natural order of things "
PETER COLQUITT: From nature doth emotion come and moods of
calmness equally are nature's gift. This is her glory."
JEFF COWTON: He was incredibly popular, unimaginably popular to
us now.
People would come to the house, they would call to meet him,
they would ask for a tour of the garden. He appeared in the guide
books, you know, suggesting, well, you might like to knock
and meet Mr Wordsworth and he might show you around. So he was
very, very much a pop star.
JAMES GRASBY: At the peak of Wordsworth's creative career. He
was living in the small and picturesque cottage known as
Dove Cottage.
But his family was growing and the Wordsworth's were running
out of room to host their literary guests.
And looking out from the small window of Dove Cottage,
Wordsworth spied a large white house being built across the
valley. He actually described the house as a temple of
abomination, but soon enough, he would be living there.
I'm very pleased to be getting closer to the abomination that
Wordsworth described it's really a very handsome house. I don't
know what Wordsworth was complaining about!
It's a crisp Georgian Stucco house on a beautiful mound
looking down over the lake and we're just coming up to the back
door and thank goodness, I'll get out of the rain. Let's see
who's here.
Hello, Elaine, how do you do? I'm James Grasby.
ELAINE TAYLOR: I'm Elaine Taylor. I'm membership a and
visitor welcome manager for Allan Bank in Grasmere.
JAMES GRASBY: So who did Wordsworth move here with?
ELAINE TAYLOR: One of the reasons to choose Allan Bank,
Their friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge had insisted on living
with the Wordsworths. Let's put it that way, and it would have
been impossible at Dove Cottage.
So they moved here. They would have been William, his wife
Mary. They'd already had three children by then, John Dora
Thomas by 1806 so Dove Cottage was full.
They had three servants. They went on to have Catherine by
September 1808. And Willie Junior by 1810, they would have
had Coleridge's sons. They came here at weekends.
Sarah Coleridge came here as well with her mum, various house
guests from time to time. So in a house with six bedrooms, there
could be up to 13 to 15 people. Certainly at weekends.
JAMES GRASBY: My goodness imagine breakfast time! [
Cross-talk] They lived here for three years and they were
turbulent times?
ELAINE TAYLOR: Certainly, Yes. Wordsworth's reputation wasn't
in the ascendant. He'd moved here to look after and
accommodate his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Coleridge was meant to be working on a weekly magazine
called The Friend. But for the most part, Coleridge's
increasing addiction to alcohol and opiates was causing great
problems for the Wordsworths.
He would stay in bed all day. He wouldn't go out walking in the
sunshine. He would either be a chatterbox at meal times or say
nothing at all. He was becoming, you know, really strongly
addicted to opiates on a heroic scale.
Well, the friendship broke up in 1810, it was never fully sort of
rectified.
JAMES GRASBY: So why did Wordsworth leave Allan Bank?
ELAINE TAYLOR: By 1811, It was becoming absolutely impossible
for them to live here. The fires, the chimneys smoked so
badly. They had chimney doctors in to try and rectify the
problem. Nothing would work. Their living conditions were so
poor.
It's very cold, it was very damp. The circumstances were so
straightened that they had to move out.
By 1812, unfortunately, Catherine who'd been born here
and Thomas who is her brother, three years older, both died.
So Allan Bank is the only house where all five children were
together.
By 1813, Wordsworth was looking to move again. I think they
would have had a clear view of the children's graves at Saint
Oswald's church. And so it was very difficult for them. So they
moved to Rydal Mount in 1813 and he lives at Rydal until his
death.
JAMES GRASBY: It's said that some of Wordsworth's best work
was in fact published after his death. The Prelude only hit the
printing press in 1853 months after Wordsworth's death. "
PETER COLQUITT: Was it for this that won the fairest of all
rivers. Loved to blend his murmurs with my nurse's song and
from his elder shades and rocky falls and from his fjords and
shallows, sent a voice that flowed along my dreams for this
didst thou o Derwent winding among grassy homes." "
Where I was looking on, a babe in arms, make ceaseless music
that composed my thoughts to more than infant softness giving
me amid the fretful dwellings of mankind. A foretaste, a dim
earnest of the calm that nature breathes among the hills and
groves."
JAMES GRASBY: Having heard those beautiful words from The
Prelude, I'm making a short journey north to the pretty town
of Cockermouth where Wordsworth spent his childhood to hear
those river murmurs for myself.
That was the noise of going through a torrential puddle. The
rain is pouring down on our journey to Cockermouth to
William Wordsworth's birthplace.
We're traveling through the heart of the Lake District,
Cockermouth is about 18 miles northwest of Grassmere.
And the landscape here is quite sensational. I mean, one can
hardly see the tops of the mountains that rise very steeply
to either side, lone rather desolate and bleak looking pine
trees and leafless ash.
We've just come off the main street in Cockermouth down a
side street into the side entrance of Wordsworth's
birthplace. A very warm coloured stone building. Coming to a
green door. I'm gonna see who's here.
We're just, were just gonna go in!
Let's wander through. This looks very much like the outworks of
rather a grand house. I mean, it's a substantial building.
I'm meeting Alex Morgan. She's the interpretation manager in
the house and hopefully she can shed some more light on the
Wordsworth's childhood.
ALEX MORGAN: How do you do? It's lovely to meet you.
JAMES GRASBY: I'm bowled over by this beautiful house. A building
of, of some grandeur really, isn't it?
ALEX MORGAN: But the reason the Wordsworth family were here is
not because they were tremendously wealthy. And I
think if people come in thinking that it can give a very
misleading impression of William's background, but in
fact, the Wordsworths lived here because this house is- it was, a
perk of William's father, John's job.
He worked as agent for Sir James Louther. James Louther was the
biggest bigwig around.
He was the wealthiest, most important man in the area. He
owned all the coal mines out on the coast.
He controlled all the parliamentary seats.
He was everyone's landlord basically.
And John Wordsworth as a young go getting lawyer got the job
and he got use of this house as part of that. So that's why the
Wordsworths fetched up here. They couldn't have ever afforded
the likes of this in any other way.
JAMES GRASBY: How did the Wordsworth live here?
ALEX MORGAN: It was effectively a sort of a corporate
entertainment venue as much as a family home. The words of us
were expected to entertain here. So I certainly think that
William and Dorothy and their brothers as small children would
not have been having free reign within the house.
They would have been in the more day to day rooms, the family
parlour, the kitchen with the maid and sort of staying out of
the way and basically roaming the countryside probably to keep
out from under people's feet as well.
So let's have a walk around, shall we? We'll start with the
formal dining room, which is just here.
There we go. That's a little bit better. A bit of light such as
it is.
JAMES GRASBY: An elegant cornice, a very handsome chimney
piece. I mean, this is the height of luxury, isn't it?
ALEX MORGAN: It really is. But this would have been a room for
special occasions only, dinner parties, Christmas, that sort of
thing. The children would certainly not have been welcome
in here.
JAMES GRASBY: The furniture and pictures, none of the material
is Wordsworth.
ALEX MORGAN: There is really next to nothing because it was a
tide cottage because the parents died young and the children were
sent away. Other people moved in here, but the Wordsworth
possessions had to be sold off to help support the children. "
PETER COLQUITT: Early died my honoured mother, she who was the
heart and hinge of all our learnings and our loves."
ALEX MORGAN: After William's mother died, their father really
couldn't cope with such a large young family.
So poor little Dorothy just aged about six years old, was packed
off to relatives that she'd never met in Halifax.
It must have felt like going to the moon. It was so far away.
And William and his brother Richard, his older brother went
down to Hawkshead where they became borders with a local
family down there.
And they went to the grammar school in Hawkshead.
And because of this William and Dorothy didn't see each other
for such a long time for years and years.
Basically, as a result of the loss of their mother, the whole
family was sort of flung in opposite directions.
And that happy life here came to an end. But the influence of the
time here never left any of them.
So here we are on the landing of the stairs, I've just opened the
blind and you can see through this massive great big window,
the vista of the garden in front of us and also the Derwent, the
river, flowing just behind there you can see. "
PETER COLQUITT: When having left his mountains to the towers of
Cockermouth. That beauteous river came. Behind my father's
house he passed close by along the margin of our terrace walk.
He was a playmate whom we dearly loved."
ALEX MORGAN: This was the fairest of all rivers as William
described it. And in his memory, it is this wonderful place to
swim and fish and play. "
PETER COLQUITT: Oh, pleasant, pleasant were the days the time
when in our childish plays my sister Emmeline and I together
chased the butterfly."
ALEX MORGAN: In reality though in those days, it was an open
sewer.
It wasn't actually that nice but that's the wonder of memory and
hindsight, it makes everything absolutely idyllic!
But this was the place that this great love of nature comes from.
And the first steps into that were this garden and this walled
garden is where he and Dorothy spent their very happiest young
years.
John and Anne Wordsworth do seem to been very unusual parents for
the time. We think it's highly possible that John and Anne had
read the works of Rousseau, the philosopher, who was very
fashionable among young adults at the time.
And he did say that children should be outside, they should
be free, they should be in nature.
This is how you get them to develop properly, give them
freedom to grow into the people they need to be.
But that was unusual and very radical. So maybe that was the
influence, that was the reason they were given so much freedom.
So we've had a look around the house. Now we're going to take a
walk down the garden because really from William's
perspective, this is the important place.
JAMES GRASBY: Being a Romantic poet wasn't for sissies. My
goodness, it is pouring with rain, but it is a soft romantic
rain.
ALEX MORGAN: We do think that in Wordsworth's time, it would have
been a working garden. It wouldn't have been laid out with
lawns for instance, it would have been, we're pretty certain
as we have it now, a very much a working garden that produces the
fruit, vegetables, edible flowers, herbs that they would
have used in the house.
JAMES GRASBY: So it's laid out symmetrically, we've got 1, 2,
3, 4 columns if you like of beds, these small, they look
like fruit trees to me. But- [ Cross Talk] apple trees?
ALEX MORGAN: Yes. And some really rare heritage varieties
of trees that we have here and we get absolutely glorious crop
of apples from them. They're largely cooking apples because
in William's time, if you were eating fruit, you would largely
be eating it cooked.
That was seen as a- as a sort of a safer way to eat it because
fruit was something that people were rather alarmed by and it
was seen as rather dangerous food that can make you ill.
So everything in the garden is a heritage variety. The particular
varieties that are here are things we think that William and
Dorothy would have recognized. We don't have anything modern.
JAMES GRASBY: And by the sound of it, the river just as the
other side of this wall is in full speed. That's the Derwent
is it?
ALEX MORGAN: It is! it is the Derwent, William's fairest of
all rivers.
JAMES GRASBY: Well, it's been an astonishing day.
What I've learned and discovered, which has been
revelatory for me really is to now think of Wordsworth in a
much more three dimensional way that up to now I felt his
contribution and my knowledge of Wordsworth was just a few pieces
of his poetry.
But I can now see the origins really of his genius have been
very drawn in and taken by this absolutely beautiful part of the
country.
And realise that he was not just a great national figure, but a
real man with real emotions and a family like the rest of us.
And what has- visiting these places has triggered in my mind,
what- what are those things that we all need in order to
flourish?
And I think what it comes down to particularly in Wordsworth's
story, those hardy perennial ideas of love of nurture of care
of parenting of the friends that you meet, the way that you
conduct yourself, all these things.
I've very much come through not only in the story of his life,
but in the literary works that he produced. I'm gonna go ahead
and start reading more Wordsworth.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the National Trust
podcast.
For more information about Wordsworth House and Alan Bank,
you can visit their website at nationaltrust.org.uk/wordsworth-
-house and nationaltrust.org.uk/allan-bank.
In the next episode, I'll be exploring the Devonshire retreat
of one of England's most celebrated detective writers,
Agatha Christie.
That episode will be available in a couple of weeks, but there
will be a mini episode available next week where we'll be hearing
more about how visitors can transport themselves back in
time at Wordsworth House.
To make sure you never miss another episode, subscribe on
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You can also email us at podcasts@nationaltrust.org.uk
until the next time from me, James Grasby. Goodbye.