This Land is Our Land An exploration of nature’s power to shape us and the impact we, in turn, have on the environment

Wordsworth House & Garden 2019 Contents Foreword by Zoe Gilbert, National Trust visitor experience manager

Foreward  1 Robert Macfarlane  16 William Wordsworth  30 The landscape around us is not ‘natural’ nature that sowed the seeds of the Nature writer or static. Human beings have always modern conservation movement. Sarah Hall  2 Dorothy Wordsworth  31 been place-makers and path-finders Novelist and short story writer Julian Cooper  18 Over the intervening years, the Quotations  36 who imbue the world with meaning, Artist Lake District has become a forum Jayne Beard  5 and it belongs to us all. For thousands Thanks  37 where tensions about land use and Farmer Six Cumbrian children  23 of years, we have covered it with our expectations of nature have been played footprints, and it, in turn, has shaped George Monbiot  6 Sara Brown  24 out. When it was designated as a World our lives. Writer and environmentalist Education tutor Heritage Site in 2017, questions about Hunter Davies  9 Dave Camlin  25 After the ice retreated about 10,000 its care and purpose become even more Writer Musician and composer years ago, the Lake District was a sharply focused. wildwood filled with aurochs, wolves, Elaine Beard  10 John Hamlett  26 In this exhibition, those who live, work lynxes and wild boar. When people Farmer Paraglider and find inspiration in this special place took over, farming wrote its story on share their passion and their fears Paul Kingsnorth  12 Sue Hayman  27 the land in the form of field systems, and hopes for its future. I hope their Novelist, poet and essayist MP walls and vernacular buildings, while reflections touch you as deeply as they centuries of mining left scars across Jamie Lund  13 Billy Bland  28 have touched me. Archaeologist Fell runner the fells.

Jan Wilkinson  14 Dan Simpson  29 In the 19th century, Wordsworth and Slate mine owner Farmer his fellow Romantic poets offered an emotional reinterpretation of the ‘Wordsworth and his fellow Romantic Lakeland landscape as a place of Catalogue designed by MorganStudios for Wordsworth House and Garden, Cockermouth CA13 9RX inspiration and respite, sparking an poets offered an emotional reinterpretation www.nationaltrust.org.uk/wordsworth-house. © National Trust 2019. The National Trust is a registered charity, no 205846 Cover photograph of haymaking in Thorneythwaite: National Trust/John Malley. Photographs of loans: Richard Jakobson appreciation of the outdoors and of the landscape’

1 Sarah Hall Novelist and short story writer

Though I have been asked, many times, must somehow manifest. The reader must Sarah Hall has won about the influence of Cumbria on my feel present. World-building within a book multiple awards and been shortlisted for the writing, I’ve never found a complete must succeed. Man Booker Prize. answer. Landscapes, people, animals, Photograph: Richard The Lake District is a construct, Thwaites cultures, traditions, histories, senses. topographically and politically, as well as So many versions exist. geologically. It has unshakable literary Perhaps it’s impossible to truly know the association. Its surface is intrinsic to its ingredients of the self in its formation, or artistic legacy and its identity – one their exact involvement in what is cannot say it has a soul – but it is also the subsequently produced. I began writing place where existing perceptions about stories, or at least thinking stories, very nature have been explored and young. The act of writing them, with challenged. Brutal became beautiful, various degrees of artistry, came later. malice became magnificence – that’s some trick. I remember roaming around the moorland near my parents’ cottage with a head full This, to me, always seems to be of of scenarios and narratives and voices; fundamental importance – the convincing myself they were real, as real exploration of mutability, natural and as what lay beneath my feet, as real as the human, and the idea of perception. In the mountains on the horizon. countryside, it is easy to see the operation What is this place, and where do we fit, of seasons. It is easy to witness the within or without it? How are we In situ is central to how I think about lessons of growth, change and mortality. connected, and how dislocated? Stories fiction, wherever it is set. This does not And in a farming community, it is can be historical, contemporary or mean a writer has to be present in the impossible not to see the challenges of futuristic, but aren’t they all ‘I roamed the moorland near my parents’ location – I never have been. But setting humans coexisting with nature. environmental, to a degree? cottage with a head full of voices’

2 3 Jayne Beard Farmer

I am not an artist, but I do like making Haweswater shadow The land defines us. Sometimes we are things. The shadow box (pictured right) box kindly loaned by open and hospitable and others dark, Sarah Hall was built after I completed my first novel, moody and inhospitable. We are ruled Haweswater. The map is of my childhood by the seasons and the weathers. It is region, which includes the reservoir. The breathtakingly beautiful but equally glassware and crockery was collected as harsh and unforgiving. The land is from its shores, if man-made bodies of our heaven and our hell, for all that she water can be said to have shores, and it holds and all that she gives. would all have belonged to residents of We love this land from the tiniest flower the drowned valley, over the centuries. Jayne Beard lives and to the largest fell. It is always in our farms with her partner Copper wire was used in the bombs hearts. It is home, our place of peace, Alan and their son Luke detonated in Mardale. in Buttermere quiet and tranquillity. We are fiercely Above: Buttermere. It is simply salvage: junk, scraps, loyal and protective of the land and our Photograph: John Malley rubbish. But when recycled and way of life, in that the two are so closely Left: Shearing stool reconsidered, it becomes a local relief intertwined that many do not see how we (cratch) kindly loaned by map, where landscape is depicted are one and the same, the land and us. Jayne and Alan Beard dimensionally, and where the We fight to preserve not only the land but methods of construction are seen. fell farming and its way of life. We may not The component parts of this map are not be rich in pocket but we are rich in life. We simply natural, and neither is the Lake are blessed to watch the changing seasons District. We reconstitute what we see, and from the depths of winter to the spring of give it meaning. We look through the life, the summer beauty and the autumnal window of our selves onto our changed colours, each year slightly different, but ‘The land is our heaven and our hell, for all and changing worlds. always and forever our land. that she holds and all that she gives’

4 5 George Monbiot Writer and environmentalist

I see the Lake District as one of the has a right and interest’ is widely seen George Monbiot is the most depressing landscapes in Europe. as the establishing creed of the western author of multiple books and helped found the It competes with the chemical deserts conservation movement. But he is partly charity Rewilding Britain. of East Anglia for the title of Britain’s responsible for a strange bifurcation in Photograph: Dave Stelfox worst-kept countryside. our minds, which sees industrialism as malign and destructive and agriculture as The celebrated fells have been thoroughly benign and harmonious. sheepwrecked: the forests that once covered them have been reduced by the Farming has done more extensive damage white plague to bare rock and bowling to wildlife and habitats than all the green, depriving animals of their habitats. factories ever built. It has reduced the You’ll see more wildlife in Birmingham. natural world to something resembling the aftermath of a nuclear winter across This conflict is not easy to resolve, but vast tracts of the uplands. two cherished assets – hill farming with hefted flocks and a thriving ecosystem Admirable as they were, why should – are at odds. A failure to recognise Wordsworth and John Ruskin govern such contradictions besets the British our tastes beyond the grave? Why conservation movement, and it goes back should the culture they mythologised to the beginning: a beginning often traced be treated as if it were the only current to a little house in Grasmere. and possible culture? Why is the inherent clash between ranching and wildlife I revere the occupant of that house, being resolved only in favour of ranching? ‘The celebrated fells have been thoroughly William Wordsworth. His assertion that Why, in the cradle of the conservation the Lake District represented ‘a sort of movement, are these obvious questions sheepwrecked, reduced by the white plague to national property in which every man not even being asked? bare rock and bowling green’

6 7 Hunter Davies Writer

I have lived long enough to witness the As a self-appointed expert on vanishing of wild mammals, butterflies, Lakeland – well, I have written loads mayflies, songbirds and fish that I once of guidebooks and walking books and feared my grandchildren would not biogs on Lakeland – I am often being experience: it has all happened faster asked, tell me, Mr Davies, what is the Hunter Davies’s many than even the pessimists predicted. secret of your eternal youth? Sorry, books include wrong question. I meant to say, what is biographies of your favourite Lakeland lake? Wordsworth and the Zoe Gilbert writes: Beatles. Photograph: Phil Rigby (Lake District There are 16, as you know, and my personal In 2008, curlews were deemed of global Icons) and Cumbria Life all-time fave is Crummock Water – my best conservation concern and became listed little piers and settlements and beauty all Above: Crummock beloved, best used, best remembered. as ‘near threatened’ on the International around. You’ll love it. Shame about the Water. Photograph: House. The skulls were found at Curlew skulls (1967), For, alas, we no longer live beside it. After roads in summer. David Noton Union for Conservation of Nature’s taxidermy curlew (date Whins Pond, Edenhall. There is no 30 years of having a home on Loweswater, Red List of Threatened Species. unknown) and otter provenance for the taxidermy curlew. skull (1998) kindly living there half of every year, and going I don’t recommend Crummock because Between 1995 and 2012, breeding loaned by Tullie House down and around and into Crummock on paper it has not a lot to offer – further The 20th century nearly saw the end of Museum and Art Gallery populations declined by 55 per cent in every day, swimming every summer, I sold away from the M6, no steamers, no Britain’s otter population, with numbers Scotland, 30 per cent in England, 81 per our house after my wife, a true Cumbrian, settlements, only one side has a road, almost completely depleted by the 1980s cent in Wales and 82 per cent in Northern Margaret Forster, died in 2016. so quiet, so alone. Because, of course, I due to habitat destruction, pollution Ireland. However, in Cumbria, numbers want it left alone, in my heart and in my and pesticides. Conservation efforts But I don’t say Crummock is the best, have risen due to conservation efforts. memories. have helped but they are still under when asked by visitors to the Lakes. I say To find out more, search online for the threat. Otters have been recorded in if you only have time to visit one, then go RSPB curlew recovery programme. the Eden valley and around Ullswater to Ullswater. It is fairly handy to get to, is These specimens are part of the and Derwent Water. This otter was so pretty, such a shapely shape, elegant ‘I want Crummock Water left alone, in natural history collection at Tullie a road casualty at Hethersgill. and eel like, with lovely steamers and my heart and in my memories’

8 9 Elaine Beard Farmer

My husband Raymond has lived and woody. Burning policies are also almost farmed in the Lake District for 63 years. impossible to carry out. I have lived here for 56, and 50 years Over recent years, flooding has had a of our working life has been as tenant major impact, bringing thousands of farmers for the National Trust. tons of gravel and debris down the gills, As new tenants, we had a remote farm covering our grazing land. Walls, fences in the Duddon Valley, 1000 feet above and bridges have been swept away. We sea level. After 13 years, the Trust offered have faced these issues three times and us the tenancy for Rannerdale Farm on worked hard to restore and re-establish Crummock Water, 400 feet above sea the land. level – this was civilisation! We have planted hedges and trees, which We keep Herdwick and Swaledale sheep, have encouraged many birds. We also but after some time we stopped keeping try to protect the famous Rannerdale Many years ago my husband started to Postcard kindly cattle because there are too many bluebells, but we are struggling because put signs up along the roadside when loaned by Elaine and footpaths and tourists now and farming of the influx of hundreds of tourists Raymond Beard the ewes and lambs were first returned policies and rules have changed. every day while they are flowering. Unless to the unfenced fell after lambing something can be done to reduce the The landscape has also changed. We time. They were photographed many Elaine and Raymond Beard have farmed for over 50 years, mostly at Rannerdale number, the bluebells as we know them are no longer allowed to aerial spray the times and have appeared in all sorts will be obliterated. bracken, so it has drastically increased of publications, including National and causes a big tick problem to the As farmers, we work hard to protect the Geographic and Cumbria magazines. sheep and humans. Sheep numbers have wildlife and the landscape for future The image made it onto postcards and been cut back, so the heather is not ‘We work hard to protect the generations, but it is becoming more and appears on tea towels and biscuit tins. grazed effectively and becomes old and wildlife and the landscape’ more difficult. If only we were reaping the rewards!

10 11 Paul Kingsnorth Jamie Lund Novelist, poet and essayist National Trust archaeologist

Nature has a capital N. This is what Paul Kingsnorth’s non-fiction is about William Wordsworth taught us. Like culture and the his namesake, William Blake, he saw environment. His fiction something which he struggled all his life is mythological to put into words.

Perhaps words can never convey what he saw. In the end, he stopped trying. He turned away from the call of the wild, towards the laureateship and the church. But we have what he left us: a pagan force for which he was a witting vehicle. All thinking things, all objects of all thought, It was only 20 years ago that prehistoric And rolls through all things.’ Wordsworth was the man who brought pecked designs were identified at Pantheism back to England. As the 19th Nature – which Wordsworth referred to Copt Howe in Langdale. In June 2018, century rose around him, as Blake’s dark as ‘her’ – was fully alive, and humans were archaeologists excavated four small satanic mills rose on land stolen from its not its masters, but a part of its living, trenches and discovered a cache of four Above: Prehistoric people by the Inclosure Acts, Wordsworth breathing reality. Wordsworth saw it. stone tools that could have been used pecked designs at Copt Howe in Langdale took a boat out onto a Cumberland lake. England forgot it. to create these images. The rock art has Irish parallels, and additional motifs Left: Three Neolithic There he saw something he would never Now we watch as icecaps melt, forests tools and one retouched were unearthed at the base of the rock. point, c3000 BC forget: a great, dark mountain that fall, species collapse into oblivion. Now ‘Wordsworth seemed to pursue him; a fearful, mystical we see where our refusal has led us. Is it saw a fearful, Watch Jamie talk about exciting rock art tear in reality that showed him, just for a too late to take a boat out onto that lake discoveries in Langdale and how centuries moment, as he wrote in Tintern Abbey, ourselves, and listen for the spirit again? mystical tear of human intervention have shaped the ‘A motion and a spirit, that impels It may be our only hope. in reality’ landscape.

12 13 Jan Wilkinson Slate mine owner

My brother-in-law Joe and I are of their predecessors. The miners of Yorkshire-born Jan caretakers of this beautiful place and Wilkinson has spent yesterday have an impact still on visitors most of her life in it’s like working on top of the world. of today. Cumbria. She owns For at least four centuries, it has been Honister slate mine. Modern society at times needs to do more Photograph: Phil Rigby home to men working the quarries and (Lake District Icons) and the mines. to encourage people outside into what Cumbria Life you and I appreciate daily, to simply be in We have great respect for what they did the middle of such an awe-inspiring place. and the conditions they worked under. They changed the landscape as they So while we maintain the skills that are worked and lived on Fleetwith. They left required to win the slate from the seams behind not only the spoil heaps of their within Fleetwith, rive it into roofing, waste, many quarry openings, roads and polish it into worktops, tiles and the like, engineering remnants, but also bothies we also have the tourist side. The balance where they sheltered, homes, tools and a is 50-50, because if the slate was no legacy that we took up to retain the longer accessible, the tourists would not skillset that was once theirs. be as interested.

In the 22 years we have been involved I am proud to be part of the family that with Honister, we have found it essential brought this industry back to life after to diversify: gravel for footpaths, gardens over a decade of being closed down, and and modern engineering installations, if Honister can be a conduit to start tours into part of the 13 miles of tunnels people getting out into space and to within the mountain, and climbing appreciate what there is, other than a experiences on the outside, where the mobile phone and an instant way of living, ‘The miners of yesterday have an impact still participants move in and out of the ruins we are happy to oblige. on visitors of today’

14 15 Robert Macfarlane Nature writer

Two remarkable novels, written half a historically long-held sense of the Lake century apart, are both set in a future District as a place of safety and refuge. England in which different kinds of crisis have occurred. Both novels recognise the Lakes as a profoundly human as well as a fiercely In John Christopher’s The Death of Grass, elemental landscape: farms and drystone a virus has ravaged almost all grass and walls are vital structures in both novels, as crop species, bringing the country to is the knowledge of how to work the land chaos and a tribal battle for resources. and how to survive in it. In The Carhullan Army, by Sarah Hall, environmental collapse has left all So many people have come here citizens herded into cities, and women over so many years, seeking different submitted to patriarchal control. versions of escape or retreat, from the Borrowdale hermit Millican Dalton to the And in both novels, the Lake District is John Christopher, The Death of Grass, 1985 edition (first published 1956) and Wordsworths, from the millions of visitors the place of retreat – the last fastness to Sarah Hall, The Carhullan Army, 2007 edition (first published 2007), kindly who arrive each year for temporary loaned by Robert Macfarlane which the characters head in their drive release from their everyday lives to those for freedom and safety. who move here from outside the region. The valleys, fells and farms become This tension between visiting and fall-back zones for small groups of dwelling, between work and play, between refugees, a place where the landscape walling places off and opening them up, is offers harsh protection from the dangers at the heart of the modern Lake District, beyond. and this is why I have chosen these two ‘The Lake District is the place of retreat, Both are fascinating, powerful novels, Robert Macfarlane, whose books include The Wild Places, has close family ties to the fascinating books as emblematic, to me, and both, it seems to me, speak to a Lake District of contemporary Cumbria. the last fastness’

16 17 Julian Cooper Artist

I was born and grew up in Grasmere in with the debatable land in between. It can High Rigg 2 (2013), oil the centre of the Lakes, but I left as be all taken in with a flick of an eye. on canvas, kindly loaned by Julian Cooper soon as I could, first to art school in This tension and congruence between London, then on extended painting nature and culture is there to see in the trips abroad, especially in the big endless permutations of crags, screes, mountains. becks, vegetation and erosions, and in the Perhaps I’d been hefted to these hills all walls, fences, fields and paths. The near along without realising it, because now my vertical fellside can be ‘read’ like a subject matter is here, which is the only painting, showing traces of hundreds of landscape I really know from the inside years of animal and human activity. and which is as exotic as anywhere else in My painting Force Crag Mine (over the the world. page) shows a hybrid landscape where the A continuing theme in my travels has been mountain’s natural systems are entwined how human and natural systems relate to with an old industrial system, both each other, sometimes harmoniously and vertically in the spoil heaps echoing the sometimes in conflict. So the recent I’m interested in developing pictorial ways Julian Cooper is a natural scree slopes, and horizontally in debate between the fell-farming of helping unfreeze that 300-year member of the Heaton the watercourse flowing from the Cooper family. His work community and advocates of ‘re-wilding’ heritage of seeing the Lake District as is in collections around waterfall through the mine workings and (both of which I’m sympathetic to) have mere backdrop or ‘scenery’, bringing what the world continuing, altered, down to the valley. made this landscape interesting again, was background up to the foreground. much as it was in the 19th century to the One characteristic of this northern Romantic writers and painters for whom it latitude is the short vertical distance Watch Julian talk about how he derives served as a test-bed for new ideas about between the cultivated area of the valleys inspiration from the historic Lakeland ‘The landscape is as exotic as anywhere nature and the individual. and the wildness of the mountain tops landscape. else in the world’

18 19 Scale Force 2 (2016), oil on canvas, kindly loaned by Julian Cooper

Force Crag Mine (2016-17), oil on canvas, kindly loaned by Julian Cooper

20 21 Six Cumbrian children

Inflow (2015-17) and Outflow 2 (2015-17), both oil on canvas, kindly loaned by Julian Cooper

Watch six local children talk about what they love about the outdoors.

22 23 Sara Brown Dr Dave Camlin Education tutor for the Royal Forestry Society and Composer and musician Forestry Commission

British Birds And Their Nests (1953) and bird skull (type unknown) kindly loaned by Sara Brown

Necklace kindly loaned by Dave Camlin

The spiral is a big part of my connection Watch Dave talk about finding inspiration I’ve always loved natural history, and to the Cumbrian landscape of my in the Cumbrian landscape – he also it makes me happy that my children birth. It features in the cup-and-ring shares some songs. share my passion. Freya and Finn rock art at Neolithic sites dotted found this bird skull in our garden. around the ancient Celtic landscape, Watch Sara talk about her love of wildlife including Little Meg near Penrith, and the outdoors and why getting kids so it reminds me of my ancestors outside is vital. who walked the land before me.

24 25 John Hamlett Sue Hayman Paraglider and filmmaker MP for Workington

Flying logbook, Nikon camera and membership card kindly loaned by John Hamlett

Artwork by Sue Hayman’s daughter kindly loaned by Sue Hayman

There’s nothing like following ridges Watch John talk about the joy of flying and mountain tops for thermals, flying and seeing the Lakes from the air. low, contouring the terrain close to We must protect our landscape, but it’s Watch Sue talk about living and working crags and cornices, waving to walkers a living, breathing, working entity of its in the Lakes. or flying thousands of feet above, own, and the people within it are as touching clouds, with views of the much a part of Cumbria as the fells we entire Lake District. hike and the lakes we sail upon.

26 27 Billy Bland Dan Simpson Fell runner and lifelong Borrowdale resident Farmer

When I was at school we collected Felt artwork by Ruby Cappleman, polled sheep’s horns and sheep clipping shears kindly loaned by Dan Simpson and Ruby Cappleman wildflowers and pressed them in a book. It’s a no-no now, but that’s how it was We’re here because we want to farm, Watch Dan talk about the pleasures and then. I could take you to a field down but other sources of income are challenges of farming in Borrowdale. the road, August Meadow, where I important too, such as our B&B and pressed 23 wildflowers, but they’re just campsite. We’re diversifying and not there now. Alice Marion Hartley undertook the same project as Billy several decades earlier. opening a craft barn. My wife, Ruby, and Cockermouth Heritage Group is starting a study into what varieties still grow Watch Billy talk about changes to the today. Alison Marion Hartley’s wildflower book (1885-89) kindly loaned by her mum make lovely crafts from wool environment during his lifetime. Cockermouth Heritage Group, Kirkgate Centre so we’re hoping to sell them here.

28 29 William Wordsworth Dorothy Wordsworth Poet Writer

William Wordsworth’s Dorothy Wordsworth’s ice skates (1824) kindly letter to Lady Beaumont loaned by The (5 January 1805). There is Wordsworth Trust, Dove a transcript over the Cottage, Grasmere page. Kindly loaned by The Wordsworth Trust, Skaters on Derwentwater Dove Cottage, Grasmere in 1895 by Joseph Brown. Image by kind permission of Keswick Museum

Zoe Gilbert writes:

These items conjure up for me the sheer physical joy and pleasure that William Wordsworth took from the Lake District. The impact of the natural world on his health and well-being, and that of his sister Dorothy, shines through their writing, and it is something that is equally important to many of us today.

30 31 To Lady Beaumont, Dunmow, Essex Children and myself, and Mr George how happy, how proud I am of your you should judge and expect of me as Postmark: 8 January 1805 Hutchinson was our Charioteer—it was a friendship, or rather I ought to be proud I am. Stamp: Penrith bold undertaking to which we were in them to whom I chiefly owe the gift; for suddenly tempted by the delightfulness of to my Brother, surely, if I am in myself My Brother chanced to meet with Miss Sara Hutchinson’s Park House the air and sunshine the day before. It was worthy of your esteem I owe it, or if I am Richardson’s letters at a Friend’s house, January 5th—1805 a keen frost and we had been taking our in any degree worthy of the great [2] and glancing over them, read those My dear Friend, pleasure upon the ice, all the family, my affection which Coleridge feels for me: written by Mrs Klopstock, he was I hope that you have several days ago Sister and I sitting upon chairs with the but when I think how great his regard for exceedingly affected by them and said it received my last letter. My Brother wrote children on our knees while my Brother me is, knowing that all you know of me is was impossible to read them without at the same time to Sir George. You will and Mr H. in their skates drove us along. from him, I really, (it is no false modesty, loving the woman. We have been very have gathered from our letters that we In the midst of our good spirits we as my Brother who knows all my desirous to see the Book ever since, and were going on happily and in our old way resolved to pluck up courage and, if the thoughts could tell you) I really, (much as I hope to be able to borrow it soon, but any having got through poor John’s [1] next day were fine, to venture over desire to see you) am almost afraid of it, new Book in our neighbourhood passes misfortune;—though our enjoyments are Kirkstone. We had a prosperous journey you will find me so different from what from house to house, and it is difficult to always damped by an inner sense of as for our greatest care and concern the you have imagined, and (believe me) so come at it within any reasonable time. uncertainty respecting our beloved Friend, Children, but both the Mother and I have much inferior. I have not those powers Poor Klopstock! we saw him at Hamburgh of whom we yet hear nothing. We should suffered for it—she is ill in the tooth-ache, which Coleridge thinks I have—I know in company with Coleridge—he had then be truly miserable about him if we were and I have got a bad cold which was so it—my only merits are my devotedness to all the liveliness of a lively Frenchman not well assured that he must be at Malta exceedingly troublesome yesterday that I those I love and I hope a charity towards about him, though his legs were so much where my Brother says they may keep out could not lift up my eyes. While I lay on all mankind. Perhaps it may seem to swoln with the dropsy that I dare say he the fever if they are not absolutely my Bed, my dear Lady Beaumont, my you that I have said too much about walked with great pain and difficulty—his senseless. I received your letter the day thoughts were full of you, I was so myself, that it is but one of the shapes second wife was with him, a young well- before yesterday while we were on our deeply affected with the tender kindness which vanity puts on, and this thought looking woman (that is young for the Wife road to Park House to visit Miss of your last letter. If I could have done any would have kept me silent but for the of so old a Man) he had married her, I Hutchinson and her Brother. We came in thing I should have written immediately high value which I set upon your esteem believe, for a nurse, and she might be and the Irish Car, my Sister, Brother, the two for my own heart’s comfort to tell you and for that cause my strong desire that probably was a very good woman; but she

32 33 did not seem to have much of the to see the Mountain-tops that gird it increased the tooth ache which she had I should like very much to see Sir George’s sensibility of his first wife. She, I believe, about. Surely we shall have the happiness had by fits for a few days before. We shall picture from the Thorn—We are all was buried at Altona, and Klopstock of meeting you there—perhaps we may return by another Road and shall not be passionately fond of the picture above our planted a Yew tree upon her grave, which remain two summers longer, for it is obliged to walk any part of the way, so, as chimney piece. We hope to be at home in Mr Duppa, an artist who was here in the possible that we may continue there a we shall choose a very fine morning for a week. Summer, told me he had seen a short time even after Coleridges return— our departure I hope I shall have the flourishing tree. I wish we had known of with what joy should I lead you to our pleasure of telling you that we are its existence and visited it when we were Orchard top! how happily could we sit perfectly well and comfortable when we Notes: there. I thought I had told you that the with Coleridge upon the Moss seat! and reach our own home again. John is [1] Her nephew bargain does not stand between Mr how many tranquil hours of pleasure perfectly recovered and can walk stoutly [2] Correspondence of Samuel Jackson and the Purchaser of his house, might we not enjoy in visiting those places as ever, but his Father was obliged to Richardson, a selection from the Original so Mrs Coleridge and the Southeys will where my Brother has murmured his carry him most of the way up the hill. Your Manuscripts, to which is prefixed A continue there till C’s return. I hope no Verses to himself! God-daughter, being the less weight fell biographical account of the author and longer—for the only comfort we had in to my share. She is a sweet Infant—very observations on his writings, by Anna thinking of Mrs C’s being turned out was I ought to tell you (for I am sure that you lively, quite different from her Brother yet Laetitia Barbauld, 6 vols., 1804. Vol. 3 that Coleridge might have no temptation will else be uneasy about us) that we shall like him. Miss Hutchinson desires me to contains four letters written by Mrs. K. to to stay in this Country. We have not met take care not to catch cold in going home. present her best respects to you Hartley S. R. in 1757–8, giving a naïve account of with a house for ourselves, so we are now In the first place we shall not go over Coleridge is here. Dear little Creature! he her romantic attachment to K. and her contented to stay where we are till we see Kirkstone for that mountain was the chief said to me this morning on seeing Johnny brief married life. She died in childbirth Coleridge and then where he settles we cause of our suffering. I had to bear the cry after his Father who was going to take Dec. 1758. Southey, writing from Old shall settle, indeed we are half glad we Baby in my arms up the hill which heated a walk “If he had the sense to know where Brathay on 21 Nov. 1804, remarked: ‘Here cannot find a house as it will be me violently and as soon as I sate down my Father is he would not cry when his is … I have looked through Richardson’s impossible for us to stay long in this again on the Carriage I felt a pain in my going such a little way.” God bless you, my papers. The Letters of Klopstock’s wife are country, and we seem as if we could not head and the cold coming on. My Sister dear Friend! We all join in affectionate very interesting; nor do I ever remember make another home out of the Vale of too, from being overheated, though I did remembr[ance] to you and Sir George— having been more deeply affected than by Grasmere while we might yet be so near as not permit her to carry the Baby, believe me [—]ry yours. D Wordsworth. the termination of that correspondence.’

34 35 Quotations Our thanks to

Oh the Lake District’s lovely. Let’s go I love this place; for me it is the beginning Towards the head of these dales was Sarah Hall Rebecca Turner there. We can eat scones. They do great and the end of everything, and found a perfect republic of Shepherds and Jayne Beard Tullie House Museum and scones. Doctor Who, timelord everywhere else feels like nowhere. Agriculturalists... Art Gallery Trust George Monbiot James Rebanks, shepherd William Wordsworth, poet The Wordsworth Trust, I walked to Crow-Park, now a rough Hunter Davies pasture, once a glade of ancient oaks, I picked up 700 discarded dog poo bags It’s this calmness that embalms your body Dove Cottage, Grasmere Elaine Beard whose large roots still remain in the at White Moss Common last year. and which gives you a sense of belief that Cumbria Wildlife Trust Paul Kingsnorth ground but nothing has sprung from Robin Lees, waste disposal worker anything is possible. RSPB them. Thomas West, writer Lucy Aspden, blogger Jamie Lund Nor were these hills high and formidable Forestry Commission, Jan Wilkinson, Honister Those buying up homes which are much only, but they had a kind of unhospitable People need to be connected to the place Whinlatter Slate Mine needed by local people are doing a serious terror in them. Daniel Defoe, author they live and to each other, to belong to a Aaron Watson Robert Macfarlane injustice to communities, which are being specific place that is not quite like another Cumbria Life Our ethos at the Calvert Trust is to decimated by being bought up by those place and a collective of people you share Julian Cooper challenge disability through outdoor The Calvert Trust with the money to do it. Tim Farron, MP things with. At its best this gives us a Art Space Gallery, London adventure. The landscape around us mooring in space and time, without which Keswick Museum and I grew up there and it’s one of the worst provides us all, with or without Sara Brown Art Gallery we are liable to be washed away. places to be a teen, no public transport, disabilities, with adventure and Paul Kingsnorth, writer and Dr Dave Camlin Phil Rigby only place to do stuff is Carlisle and even enjoyment, contributing to our well- environmentalist John Hamlett, Lunar Gloria Edwards that was small. being, health and happiness. Productions Herringbrew, online commentator Paul Stafford, Calvert Trust Cockermouth Heritage Sue Hayman Group, Kirkgate Centre Billy Bland Ruth Scammell Dan Simpson James Rebanks Ruby Cappleman National Library of Dr Simon Jackson Scotland

36 37 This catalogue was produced to accompany This Land is Our Land, an exhibition at Wordsworth House and Garden

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