Qualla: Dove Cottage

Dove Cottage: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Broster, CC BY 2.0. Before it became a museum, before it was world-famous, the house at the edge of Grasmere served beer. From 1617 to 1793, the building called itself the Dove and Olive, then later the Dove and Olive Branch - an inn for travellers walking the road between Ambleside and Keswick. It closed in 1793 and stood empty for six years. Then, on 20 December 1799, two siblings in their late twenties, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, paid John Benson of Grasmere five pounds a year and moved in. They would call the next eight and a half years their time of "plain living, but high thinking." By 1808, when they finally outgrew the rooms, William had written some of the most enduring lyrics in the English language inside them.

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Image: Peter Broster | CC BY 2.0

Dove Cottage: Plain Rooms, Slate Floors

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robin Drayton, CC BY-SA 2.0. The cottage is small and frankly low - four rooms downstairs, four upstairs, built of limewashed local stone with a slate roof. The ground-floor "houseplace" had been a drinking room when this was a pub. Its oak panels and slate floors had been chosen to take spilt ale. The Words...

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Image: Robin Drayton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dove Cottage: Daffodils and a Journal

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0. Dorothy kept what is now known as the Grasmere Journal during these years, recording the weather, the meals, the visitors, and what she saw on walks. On 15 April 1802, she described daffodils dancing along the shore of Ullswater. Two years later her brother turned that walk into ...

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Image: Peter Turner | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dove Cottage: The Opium Eater Takes Over

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sourav Niyogi, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wordsworth left Dove Cottage in May 1808 for the larger Allan Bank in Grasmere, then the Old Rectory, and finally Rydal Mount in 1813. A long-time admirer and houseguest, Thomas De Quincey, moved into the cottage the following year and stayed until 1820. De Quincey would publish ...

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Image: Sourav Niyogi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Dove Cottage: The Trust and the Pilgrims

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christine Hasman, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1890, the Reverend Stopford Brooke founded the Wordsworth Trust and bought the cottage for £650, specifically to preserve it. It opened to the public in July 1891 as one of the earliest writer's home museums in England. The rooms remain almost untouched from Wordsworth's day. ...

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Image: Christine Hasman | CC BY-SA 2.0