Rydal Mount

Rydal Mount is a whitewashed house in the quiet village of Rydal, just above Ambleside in the Lake District. It stands on a hillside with views across two lakes, Windermere and Grasmere. William Wordsworth lived here from 1813 until his death in 1850, and his sister Dorothy stayed on until 1855. The house is now kept as a writer’s home museum open to visitors. The garden slopes down from the house and frames the same lake views that Wordsworth enjoyed. A small wooden Writing Hut still stands at the top of the garden, where he wrote many of his later poems. Wordsworth moved to Rydal after years in Dove Cottage and Allan Bank, needing more room for his family and the many callers who came to see him. His sister Dorothy kept her own room in the house and recorded daily life in her journals. Samuel Taylor Coleridge often walked the five miles from Keswick to talk over poetry and philosophy. Wordsworth himself said the garden was his real office, not the room inside the house. The Writing Hut offered shelter from the Lake District’s frequent rain while he worked. Visitors walk through the main rooms where the Wordsworths lived and worked. The garden paths lead past flowerbeds, lawns and mature trees that Dorothy described in her letters. From the top lawn both lakes are visible, their waters framed by fells. The Writing Hut sits apart, a simple shelter with a bench and a sloping roof. The house still holds Wordsworth’s books, furniture and personal objects arranged as they were in the 19th century.