Qualla: Rydal Mount

Rydal Mount: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Humphrey, CC BY-SA 2.0. The bench-and-roof contraption tucked away on the high side of the Rydal Mount garden is barely big enough to call a building. Wordsworth called it his Writing Hut. From the bench you can see Grasmere lake to the north-west and Windermere to the south-east, and on a wet Lakeland afternoon - which is most afternoons - the small roof keeps the rain off. The poet who built it was not the young romantic of Dove Cottage anymore. He was in his forties, financially comfortable for the first time, with grown and not-yet-grown children, and he had finally found the house he intended to die in.

Read more: Rydal Mount on Qualla

Image: Richard Humphrey | CC BY-SA 2.0

Rydal Mount: The Long Move Up the Valley

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MissvainOriginal author: mattbuck, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the time the Wordsworths reached Rydal Mount in 1813, they had already tried three other houses in eight years. Dove Cottage in Grasmere, from 1799 to 1808, had been beloved but too small for a family that kept expanding. Allan Bank, also in Grasmere - which William had public...

Read more: Rydal Mount on Qualla

Image: MissvainOriginal author: mattbuck | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rydal Mount: A Garden Office

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Herbert Railton, Public domain. William designed the layout of the gardens himself, and often said the grounds were his real office. The house had a proper writing room indoors; he preferred to be outside. The Writing Hut on the high side of the grounds - little more than a bench under a small roof - was where ...

Read more: Rydal Mount on Qualla

Image: Herbert Railton | Public domain

Rydal Mount: Dora's Field, and Loss

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marion Dutcher, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Wordsworths had three daughters and three sons. Dora, born at Dove Cottage in 1804, married Edward Quillinan after a long campaign by her father against the match. She died of tuberculosis in 1847, aged forty-two, three years before her father. When she died, William and Mary...

Read more: Rydal Mount on Qualla

Image: Marion Dutcher | CC BY-SA 2.0

Rydal Mount: Kept in the Family

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Lane, CC BY-SA 2.0. After Mary's death the family let the house go, and Rydal Mount drifted through other owners for over a century. Then in 1969, William's great-great-granddaughter Mary Henderson - née Wordsworth - bought it back. It has stayed in the Wordsworth family ever since. The house opened...

Read more: Rydal Mount on Qualla

Image: Frank Lane | CC BY-SA 2.0