Levens Hall the Lake District

Turner sketched the Hall in August 1816. From March to June 1897 Mrs Humphry Ward rented the house whilst writing Helbeck of Bannisdale, using the Hall as the main model for the novel's 'Bannisdale Hall'. The house delighted her: at last we arrived saw the wonderful grey house rising above the river in the evening light, & plunged into the hall, the drawing rooms, the dining room, and all the intricacies of the upper passages & turrets with the delight and the curiosity of a pack of children. Great wood and peat fires were burning everywhere; the magnificent carved chimney pieces in the drawing rooms, the arms of Elizabeth over the hall fire, the strange stucco birds and beasts running round the hall, shewing dimly in the scanty lamplight we shall want about six more lamps and the beauty of the marvelous old place took us all by storm. Then through endless passages and vast kitchens, bright with long rows of copper pans & moulds we made our way out into the gardens among the yews and cedars, and had just enough light to see that Levens apparently is like nothing else but itself, and that there are broad straight graveled paths among the fantastic creatures & pyramids & crowns ... It is hard to stop quoting: one can feel the novelist's imagination taking fire. The house had everything even a ghost, the 'Levens Lady', a legend which figures in the novel.

luxury hotels in the lake district

The dining room, its walls covered with gilded leather, is clearly described in the novel: 'It [the leather] is very dim and dingy now,' said Helbeck, 'but when it was fresh, it was the wonder of the place. The room got the name of Paradise from it , Helbeck also describes the grounds, including the extraordinary topiary garden. The seventeenth century owner was a friend of the diarist John Evelyn, an early enthusiast for landscape gardening, and the garden is the best one of its period still intact. During Mrs Ward's tenancy several literary visitors came, notably Henry James, about whose visit (alas) we have no details.