Qualla: Rydal Water

Rydal Water: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cmyk at English Wikipedia, Public domain. If you walk the path along the north shore of Rydal Water on a clear afternoon, you can see the gardens of Rydal Mount on the hillside above you - the house where Wordsworth lived for thirty-seven years. The lake is small enough to circle on foot before lunch. Its surface holds reflections of Nab Scar and Loughrigg Fell with a stillness that bigger lakes never quite manage. Rydal Water is one of the smaller bodies of water in the Lake District, but it is so closely tied to the Romantic poets and their walks that almost nothing said about it can avoid them.

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Image: Cmyk at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Rydal Water: A Small Lake, Carefully Measured

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Dibb, CC BY-SA 2.0. Rydal Water is roughly 1,290 yards long - about 1.18 kilometres - and at its widest it spans 380 yards, or 350 metres. It covers an area of 0.12 square miles, or 0.31 square kilometres. The deepest point reaches 55 feet (17 metres), and the lake sits 177 feet (54 metres) above se...

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Image: Michael Dibb | CC BY-SA 2.0

Rydal Water: Between Two Famous Houses

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Dibb, CC BY-SA 2.0. The lake's position turns out to matter. Grasmere lies just upstream; Dove Cottage, where William and Dorothy Wordsworth lived from 1799 to 1808, sits at the edge of Grasmere village. Rydal Mount, where they moved in 1813 and stayed until their deaths, sits on the hillside above ...

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Image: Michael Dibb | CC BY-SA 2.0

Rydal Water: Art and Memory

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian Clift, CC BY-SA 2.0. An engraving of Rydal Water by the artist George Pickering appeared in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book in 1838, accompanied by verses from Letitia Elizabeth Landon - one of the bestselling poets of her day - that paid open homage to Wordsworth. Landon's verses were the kind of l...

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Image: Brian Clift | CC BY-SA 2.0

Rydal Water: Dora's Field and the Spring

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Herrick from Sheffield, UK, CC BY 2.0. On a low slope above the eastern end of the lake, just below Rydal Mount, sits Dora's Field - the small piece of ground William and Mary Wordsworth bought after their daughter Dora's death from tuberculosis in 1847, and planted with daffodils. It belongs to the National Trust now...

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Image: Tim Herrick from Sheffield, UK | CC BY 2.0