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Hawkshead

There are more Beatrix Potter connections in the enchanting little village of Hawkshead. Her solicitor husband, William Heelis, worked fro an office in Main Street, and this has now been transformed into The Beatrix Potter Gallery (National Trust). The gallery features an exhibition of her original drawings and illustrations alongside details ofher life.

Hawkshead has specific Wordsworth connections, too. Hawkshead Grammar School was founded in 1585 by Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, and between 1779 and 1787 the young Willia Wordsworth was a star pupil. The earliest of his surviving poems was written to celebrate the school's 200th year. The school is open from Easter to September and visitors can inspect th classrooms during the summerholidays, see the desk where William carved his name and have a look around the headmaster's study. Ann Tyson's Cottage, where Wordsworth lodged while he attended the school, has also survived. It stands in Wordsworth Street and is now a guest house.

Situated at the head of Esthwaite Water, enjoying glorious views of Coniston Old Man and Helvellyn, Hawkshead is a delightful village of narrow cobbled lanes with a pedestrianised main square dominated by the Market House, or Shambles, and another square linked to it by little snickets and arched alleyways that invite exploration. The poet Norman Nicholson observed that, "The whole village could be fitted into the boundaries of a large agricultural show; yet it contains enough corners, angles, alleys and entries to keep the eye happy for hours."

The Church of St Michael and All Angels, with its massive 15th-century tower, seems rather grand for the village, but it was built at a time when Hawkshead was a wealthy town. Inside, there are some remarkable wall paintings from the late 1600s, and look out for the "Buried in Woolen" affidavit near the vestry door. In 1666, the government ad decreed that corpses must not be buried in shrouds made from "flaxe, hempe, silke or hair, or other than what is made of sheeps wool onely". The idea was to help maintain the local woollen industry and this was one way of ensuring that even the dead got to help out. The church is the focal point of the annual Lake District Summer Music Festival and a popular venue for concerts and recitals. In the churchyard is a war memorial erected in 1919 and modelled on the ancient runic cross at Gosforth.

Some lovely walks lead from Hawkshead to Roger Ground and Esthwaite Water, possibly the least frequented of the Lakes, and also to the nearby hamlet of Colthouse where there's an early Quaker Meeting House built around 1690. Esthwaite Water was much loved by Wordsworth, as he shows in The Prelude:

My morning walks were early;
oft before the hours of school
I travelled round our little lake, fiv miles
Of pleasant wandering. Happy time!