In late 1799, while on a walking tour of the Lake District, William Wordsworth saw Dove Cottage in Grasmere and decided to make it his home. He had known the valley as a boy, describing it as ‘paradise’. Within a few weeks, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy had moved in and were busily furnishing the home and planning a garden.  It was whilst living here that Wordsworth produced most of his greatest and best-loved poems, and Dorothy wrote her fascinating Grasmere journal. 

A visit to Dove Cottage today transports you back to this remarkable period of ‘plain living and high thinking’. The sights, sounds and smells bring to life the bustling family home the Wordsworths would have known over 200 years ago. In this humble Lake District cottage, you can feel how a unique combination of people and place came together and changed poetry forever.