Dove Cottage

Dove Cottage stands beside the road from Ambleside to Keswick, on the edge of Grasmere in the Lake District. Built in the early 17th century, it began as an inn called the Dove and Olive and served travellers for more than a century. The stone house has four rooms downstairs and four above, with oak panels and slate floors that recall its days as a public house. In the 1790s the fireplaces were changed to burn coal instead of peat. The cottage is now a Grade I listed building, preserved much as it was when Wordsworth lived there. Wordsworth moved into Dove Cottage in December 1799 with his sister Dorothy. During their eight years there he wrote many of his best-known poems, including ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ and parts of The Prelude. Dorothy kept her Grasmere Journal in the same years, noting daily life and visitors such as Coleridge, Southey and Walter Scott. Their household grew to include Mary Hutchinson, whom Wordsworth married in 1802, and their three children were born in the cottage. The garden behind the house, left deliberately wild, gave them quiet pleasure. Inside, the ground floor holds the kitchen-parlour with its cooking range and window seat, Dorothy’s small bedroom, a separate kitchen and a buttery used as a larder. Upstairs, Wordsworth’s study overlooks meadows towards the lake, while the other rooms served as bedrooms and later a nursery. The cottage has no running water and the toilet is in the garden. Nearby, the Jerwood Centre holds manuscripts, books and art connected with the Wordsworths.