• 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

Hest Bank and Loughrigg the Lake District

Hest Bank Ambleside St John's in the Vale l00yds further N is Loughrigg Holme, home of Edward Quillinan (poet and Irish half pay captain), and Dora (Wordsworth's daughter), after their marriage in 1841. Wordsworth had strenuously opposed the match but Quillinan became in time his valued friend and occasional collaborator. Visitors included Harriet Martineau (often), and Charlotte Bronte in 1850, at which time Matthew Arnold met both ladies there. He like Charlotte Bronte, but noted:

Talked to Miss Martineau (who blasphemes frightfully) about the prospects of the Church of England, and, wretched man that I am, promised to go and see her cow keeping miracles ... I, who hardly know a cow from a sheep. More decorously, he commemorated the occasion in his poem 'Haworth Churchyard', an elegy for Charlotte Bronte.

In 1861 Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury and a poet who deserves to be better known, spent the late summer and the wet autumn here with his family, sketching and working on his translation of the Odyssey. His account (in 'A Letter to America') gives us a wonderful glimpse of a Victorian family holiday: Then our holiday came: in Rydal valley we spent it, Snug in our 'own hired house' beneth the elbow of Loughrigg. o but to think of the rain that pelted s all that Autumn,Flood, and mizzle, and shower, and shower, and flood and mizzle,Rothay over his banks, and all the waterfalls roaring, I in Macintosh case, and sometimes Alice and Mary, Splashing away to the Ambleside Post office nightly for letters. If strong waters are bad for the human constitution, Then are all we four done up and ruined forever.

Still we drew and walked, and made our hay when the sun shone: Or at Fox How sometimes at croquet played with the Arnolds, or in cars to neighboring lakes attempted excursions. So dripped on the weeks: and about the end of October homeward sped we again to all our habits and duties

Shortly further brings us to Stepping Stones (originally 'Lanty Fleming's Cottage'), home during his first marriage of Edward Quillinan. Later it belonged to Wordsworth's son William, and after that to Gordon, the poet's grandson, who arranged and annotated WordsWorth's voluminous manuscripts there. The house takes its modern name from the picturesque steppingstones across the Rothay opposite.

The road continues to join the A591 at Rydal. Both roads run alongside the River Rothay. Somewhere near here Nathaniel Hawthorne (on July 1918-55) paused during a walk on his tour of the Lakes and reflected The Rothay is very swift and turbulent today, and hurries along with foam flecks on its surface, filling its banks from brim to brim, a stream of perhaps twenty feet across.

Home >> Interesting Articles about the Lake District