Where one can find the Lake District!
Map of the Lake District
The Lake District National Park is England's largest and covers 2292 km² There are 12 million visitors a year 42,239 people live within the boundaries of the National Park Over 6000 known archaeological sites and monuments dating from prehistory to World War II mix of lakes, farmland, fell, woodland and settlement gives each valley a visual and cultural distinctiveness of its own.
The Lake Poets
This name was given to a group of English poets who spent time in the Lake District and whose writing was influenced by the beautiful landscape that surrounded them there. The main poets that are known as Lake Poets are Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey and William Wordsworth. These three didn’t form a “poetry school” nor are there theoretical texts written by them declaring a special Lake Poetry. Apart from the love for the Lake District all three poets are considered as part of the romantic movement and made this kind of poetical work famous.
William Wordsworth:
William Wordsworth is the most famous member of the Lake Poets and the writer who made the romantic writing successful in Great Britain. He was born in 1770 in Cockermouth, which is located in the north of the Lake District, and spend most of his life in the area of Grasmere and Rydal which are also villages in the Lake District. Until his death in 1850 in Rydal Mount he wrote some of the greatest English poetry and therefore influenced not only his but also further generations of poets. As a romantic poet, he showed in his works his love for nature, the Lake District and the settled domestic life.
Dove Cottage:
This Cottage, that is located near Grasmere was from 1799 to 1808 the home of William Wordsworth. It is difficult to say exactly when the cottage was build, but it is very likely that it was constructed during the early 17th century and was, in the second half of the 18th century used a an inn that was called “Dove and Olive”. That’s also why still at the time of Wordsworth the cottage was called Dove Cottage. Before William Wordsworth discovered the building and moved there together with his sister Dorothy in December 1799, the cottage stood empty for several years. The Wordsworths and later also William’s wife and children lived in the cottage until May 1808. During this time Wordsworth wrote some of his most important works, like for example “I wandered lonely as a cloud”. In Dove Cottage he was often visited by Sir Walter Scott and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, just to name two of the most important of his friends. After the Wordsworths moved out of the cottage Thomas De Quincey, one of their friends, moved into the building. Also De Quincey became famous as a writer. From 1836 on there were varied successions of tentants before in 1890 a trust founded by Reverend Stepford Brook bought the cottage and later opened it for the public. Today it is a Grade 1 listed building and visited by around 70,000 people each year.