• Alston
• Allonby And Aspatria
• Ambleside And Troutbeck
• Appleby In Westmoreland
• Askam In Furness
• Barrow In Furness
• Bassenthwaite
• Borrowdale
• Bowness On Windermere
• Brough
• Buttermere
• Brampton
• Broughton In Furness
• Carlisle
• Cartmel
• Cleator Moor
• Cockermouth
• Coniston
• Dalston
• Dalton In Furness
• Dent
• Grange Over Sands
• Grasmere
• Greenodd
• Grizedale
• Hawkshead
• Kendal
• Keswick
• Kirkby Lonsdale
• Wasdale And Gosforth
• Kirkby Stephen
• Longtown
• Loweswater
• Maryport
• Melmerby
• Milnthorpe
• Nenthead
• Newby Bridge
• Orton
• Penrith
• Pooley Bridge
• Ravenglass And Eskdale
• Sedbergh
• Seascale
• Shap
• Silloth And Solway
• St Bees
• Skiddaw
• Staveley
• Tebay
• The Duddon Valley
• Threlkeld
• Ulverston
• Vale Of Lorton
• Wasdale
• Wetheral
• Whitehaven
• Wigton
• Windermere
• Workington
• Spa Hotels In Windermere The Lake District
• Hotels With Hot Tubs In Windermere
• Hot Tub Hotels In Windermere And The Lake District
• Romantic Breaks In Windermere And The Lake District
• Themed Hotels In Windermere And The Lake District
• Weekend Breaks In Windermere
• Windermere Attractions And Boat Trips
• Boutique Hotels And Accommodation In Windermere And The Lake District
• Windermere In The Rain
• One Way Ticket To Windermere Por Favor
• Horse Riding In The Lake District
• Walks In The Lake District
• Windermere Boutique Hotel Bedrooms
• Holiday Accommodation Wanted In The Lake District

Grasmere the Lake District

Grasmere Sports have been held here since 1861 on the Thursday nearest August 20. They attract huge crowds and include the famous Guides' Race (up and down Butter Crags near Greenhead Gill) as well as Cumberland and Westmorland style wrestling and Hound Trails. Hest Bank Ambleside St John's in the Vale Beatrix Potter attended the Sports in 1895 and noted 'We went late, and had difficulty in finding friends among the crowd of carriages' an experience familiar to modern visitors. She watched hound trails:

About nineteen dogs were thrown off, but two young hounds turned back at once, puzzling about the meadow. The spectators on the tarred wall received them with execrations and shouts of 'any price agin yon doug!' Rattler won, a lean, black and white hound from Ambleside ... Rattler's victory appeared popular, Mr. Wilkinson danced on the box, slapping his thigh ... Indeed, Mr Wilkinson raced so alarmingly on his own account with a wagonette that we began to wonder whether he was, to quote aunt Booth's expressive phrase, 'boozy', the lower orders were so extensively, but the weather was some excuse.

Opposite the Sports Field at the corner of the lane to Dove Cottage is a small bungalow. This was rented in 1957 by the novelist Malcolm Lowry, author of Under the Volcano. He told a friend cheerfully, it's Grasmere where Wordsworth designed the chimney pots and you may see de Quincey's room (smoking prohibited) in de Quincey's house to which, on payment of 1/6 you may be admitted on all days save Sundays as Wordsworth's cottage, which it was for 5 years.

The village is picturesque from a distance and still nestles inconspicuously in the valley amongst its many trees. The painter Paul Nash stayed here in July 1914 and thought it 'a very Sammy Palmer village at even' high praise from an admirer of Samuel Palmer's visionary twilight landscapes.

Famous visitors to Grasmere the Lake District

E M Forster stayed in Grasmere in July 1907: 'It rains all night and every day, but not always all day ... I like Grasmere,' he told a correspondent. 'I have seldom enjoyed a sight more than Dove Cottage ... Between the rain we row on the Lake pick Welsh Poppies and buy gingerbread.' The following day he was off on a trip 'round Thirlmere for 3/6', and he asked plaintively, 'Where is Joanna's Rock?' (For an answer of sorts, see p 103.) Later he used Grasmere as a symbol of comfortable Englishness in A Passage to India: 'Ah, dearest Grasmere!' [exclaims Mrs Moore as the train winds across a scorching plain towards the Marabar Hills.] Its little lakes and mountains were beloved by them all. Romantic yet manageable, it sprang from a kindlier planet.

The Parish Church of St Oswald is easily found. west of the church and facing it across the road is The Rectory. The Wordsworths rented this house (built 1690; much enlarged in the late nineteenth century) from May 1811 to May 1813. In 1811, according to Dorothy's Journal, We had the finest Christmas day ever remembered, a cloudless sky and glittering Lake; the tops of the higher mountains covered with snow. The day was kept as usual with roast beef and plum pudding.

On December 27 'The fiddlers are in the kitchen and D[ora] is dancingI must go and join in the dance ... William is at work on his great poem' The Excursion, completed in 1812. In summer the children could play in the grassy churchyard. The house, however, was damp from the nearby river and the tenancy was a sad one, for in 1812 three year old Catharine and six year old Thomas both died and were buried in the churchyard. The Wordsworths left for Rydal Mount in 1813. (The house receives a fictionalized treatment in The Excursion Book VII, where Wordsworth gives it a holly hedge and a gravel path through an avenue of ash trees to the church. None of these features was really present.)

Opposite the church across the River Rothay are the Grasmere Tea Gardens, a splendidly gimcrack prefabricated building in the worst possible taste, long regarded with affection by all whom? Know the village. Though established during the Second World War, It seems to embody precisely the spirit of John Betjeman's poem 'Lake District', which gently satirizes the interwar hiking boom:

Spirit of Grasmere, bells of Ambleside, Sing you and ring you, water bells, for me; You water color waterfalls may foam; Long hiking holidays will yet provide Long stony lanes and back at six for tea And Heinz's Ketchup on the tablecloth. The Tea Gardens themselves provide the poet's viewpoint in David Wright's sequence of 'Grasmere Sonnets' (collected in To the Gods the Shades, 1976): In a teagarden overhanging the Rotha On whose clear surface cardboard packages And other discards take their voyages To the quiet lake, I wondered what he'd say, Old mountain trotter with a nose like Skiddaw Safely asleep there where the river nudges Its Coca Cola can into the sedges, Were his bleak eye to brood upon our day.

 Enter the churchyard by the gate (near the bridge). Until the late nineteenth century there was a stone seat fixed to the wall at L of this gate, and here the characters sit to talk in Book V of The Excursion: The Vicar paused; and toward a seat advanced, A long stone seat, fixed in the Churchyard wall; Part shaded by cool sycamore, and part Offering a sunny resting place to them Who seek the House of Worship, while the bells Yet ring with all their voices.

For much of Wordsworth's life most of the graves were unmarked, a practice which he praises in The Excursion Book VI. St Oswald's Church is described in Book V of The Excursion: Not raised in nice proportion was the pile; But large and massy; for duration built; With pillars crowded, and the roof upheld By naked rafters intricately crossed.

Like leafless under boughs in some thick wood The floor of nave and aisle, in unpretending guise, Was occupied by oaken benches ranged In seemly rows; ... An heraldic shield, Varying its tincture with the changeful light, Imbued the altar window; fixed aloft A faded hatchment hung, and one by time Yet un-discolored. A capacious pew Of sculptured oak stood here, with drapery lined.

Home >> Interesting Articles about the Lake District