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Rydal Mount and Rydal Chapel

Return to the  road in front of Rydal Mount and go down to St Mary's Church, formerly known as Rydal Chapel, built for the benefit of local people in 1823 by Lady Le Fleming in what had been her Wordsworth wrote a poem 'To Lady Fleming on the erection of Rydal Chapel' and later became a 'chapel warden' there.

The poem praises the chapel 'Lifting her front with modest grace/To take a fair recess more fair' but privately he thought the chapel's design inappropriate and found the interior cramped. It was enlarged in 1884. The Wordsworth family pew was the front one on the N side; Dr Arnold and his family from Fox How had the front pew on the s side. It must have made a daunting prospect for the preacher (though sometimes Arnold himself preached here). In 1830 the eleven year old John Ruskin, on a Lakeland tour with his parents, attended the chapel, and wrote in his diary:

We were lucky in procuring a seat very near that of Mr Wordsworth, there being only one between it and the one we were in. We were rather disappointed in this gentleman's appearance especially as he appeared asleep the greatest part of the time He seemed about 60 This gentleman possesses a long face and a large nose with a moderate assortment of grey hairs and 2 small eyes grey not filled with fury wrapt inspired with a mouth of moderate dimensions that is quite large enough to let in a sufficient quantity of beef or mutton & to let out a sufficient quantity of poetry.

A window at the E end of the s wall commemorates the Arnolds; next to it is a lovely, exuberant window by Henry Holiday in memory of Jemima and Rotha Quillinan, Edward Quillinan's daughters and Dora Wordsworth's stepdaughters. The beautiful faces of the child angels are typical of work by Holiday (1839-1927) a Pre-Raphaelite who was England's most prolific designer of stained glass (he also drew the weird, dreamlike illustrations for Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark.)

From the churchyard a gate opens into Dora's Field (NT). In 1826, when there was a risk of the Wordsworths being turned out of Rydal Mount to make way for their landlady's aunt, Wordsworth deterred Lady Le Fleming by buying this field and threatening to build a house there. Later he gave the field to his daughter. Wordsworth himself drained it and built a terrace at the upper end. 'A Wren's Nest' (1833) describes a nest built here in a low branch of a pollard oak, sheltered by primrose leaves. The field is still wooded and full of wild flowers.

Return to the main road and continue w for 100 yds. On the corner is the Glen Rothay Hotel, formerly Ivy Cottage. This was the home of Captain Thomas Hamilton (1789-1842), author of Annals of the Peninsular Campaign and a once famous autobiographical novel, Cyril Thornton (1827), and a prolific contributor to Blackwood's Magazine in its early days. Later Edward Quillinan lived here with his first wife Jemima, who died here by fire in an accident in 1822. For a literary walk from here to 'Grassmere' loaded with sentiment and facetious humour, see John Wilson's Recreations of Christopher North (Volume III), which gives a good picture of the area in the early Victorian period.

Rydal Water

To quote Thomas West, the road 'serpentizes' (his favorite word) from Rydal 'upwards round a bulging rock, fringed with trees, and brings you soon in sight of Rydal Water' Coleridge first saw this small but beautiful lake, with its two islands, in 1799 and jotted a verbal sketch: The Rydale Lake glittering & rippled all over/only on the Rydale side of the ovel Island of Trees that lies athwart the Lake a long round pointed wedge of black glossy calm Rocky Island across the narrow, like the fragment of some huge bridge, now over grown with moss & Trees The lake was deeply loved by the Wordsworths, and Dorothy often mentions it in her Journals. 'I always love to walk that way,' she wrote of the road that passes along the N side, 'because it is the way I first came to Rydale and Grasmere, and because dear Coleridge did also'. Visiting the Lake District with William in 1794, she had reached the lake 'just at sunset. There was a rich yellow light on the waters, and the Islands were reflected there.' On November 71805 she noted:

The trees on the larger island on Rydale Lake were of the most gorgeous colors; the whole Island reflected in the water the rocky shore, spotted and streaked with purplish brown heath, and its image in the water were indistinguishably blended, like an immense caterpillar, such as, when we were children, we used to call Woolly Boys, from their hairy coats.

Wordsworth's poem 'The Wild Duck's Nest' (1817) describes a 'beautiful nest' seen by him on the large island. He seems to have been especially fascinated by the variety of bird song to be heard here. In June 1806 he composed 'Yes, it was the Mountain Echo' on the s shore, hearing the cuckoo's call echoing from the rocks of Nab Scar; 'By the Side of Rydal Mere' (1834) celebrates 'liquid music's equipoise' as birds sing their evening songs by the lake, and 'The leaves that rustled on this oakcrowned hill' addresses the owl, whose 'unexpected shriek' echoes across the 'inverted mountains' reflected in the water.

'Written with a Slate Pencil upon a Stone, the Largest of a Heap lying near a Deserted Quarry, upon One of the Islands at Rydal' (1800) describes a 'hillock of misshapen stones' on the large island as nothing more Than the rude embryo of a little Dome Or pleasure house, once destined to be built Among the birch trees of this rocky isle by Sir William Le Fleming of Rydal Hall in the early eighteenth century. The project (which Wordsworth calls an 'outrage') was abandoned and Wordsworth saw the story as a salutary warning to people impatient to build themselves 'trim Mansion[s]' in the Lake District, advising them to think again; and, taught By old Sir William and his quarry, leave Thy fragments to the bramble and the rose; There let the vernal slowworm sun himself, And let the redbreast hop from stone to stone.

Facing the lake across the road is Nab Cottage, a fine farmhouse dated 1702. In the early nineteenth century it was the home of the statesman John Simpson, whose daughter Margaret was courted (despite the Wordsworths' disapproval) by Thomas De Quincey and bore his son in 1816. As Dorothy Wordsworth wrote somewhat maliciously:

At the uprouzing of the Bats and Owls he regularly went thither and the consequence was that Peggy Simpson, the eldest daughter of the house presented him with a son ... They married in 1817. When John Simpson fell into debt in 1829, De Quincey took on the mortgage, became nominal owner and lived in the house from time to time but had to sell it in 1833. Later Hartley Coleridge rented the house and died here in 1849.

Things to do near Rydal Water the Lake District

At the head of Rydal Water is the White Moss Car Park, occupying the old White Moss Quarry. Wordsworth's 'Beggars' (1802) describes a picturesque family of roguish beggars whom Dorothy recorded in her Journal on May 27 1800: she saw the father 'beside the bridge at Rydal ... sitting at the roadside, his two asses standing beside him, and the two young children at play upon the grass.' Wordsworth placed the beggars 'near the quarry at the head of Rydal Lake, a place still a chosen resort of vagrants travelling with their families.'

The small unsigned turning uphill immediately after the quarry is the old road over White Moss Common. The present road continues on the level, on a causeway built about 1831. A third route to Grasmere is by the bridle path reached by the gate behind Rydal Mount (Wordsworth calls it 'the upper path'; we shall explore it later). Dr Thomas Arnold, as progressive in his views on road building as in his politics, used to tease Wordsworth by referring to the picturesque Upper Path as 'Old Corruption', the road over the Common as 'Bit by bit Reform', and the new level road as 'Radical Reform.' Wordsworth was never reconciled to the latter, for the new road cut brutally through Bainriggs wood and destroyed the lonely peace of the lakeshore. We take it nonetheless. 'Brothers Wood' and Dove Cottage.

By the sign announcing 'Grasmere' a grove of trees slopes uphill from the road. This is all that remains of 'Brothers Wood', so-called by Wordsworth and his family because the poet composed 'The Brothers' whilst walking there in 1799. The wood was, Wordsworth said, 'in a great measure destroyed by turning the high road along the side of the water. The few trees that are left were spared at my intercession'.

On the E side of A591 (opposite Prince of Wales Hotel) at the N edge of Grasmere is the main car park for Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum (open daily 9.305.30; closed mid January to mid February and Christmas Day; admission charge), home of William and Dororthy Wordsworth (and at times of their brother John) from 1799 to 1808, and from 1802 of the poet's wife Mary. From 1809 to 1820 it was the home of Thomas De Quincey, who continued to rent it and store books there until 1835.

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