Dove Cottage: Wordsworth’s Lakeland Home

Many of them were written right here, at Dove Cottage in the Lake District in northern England, where he lived with his sister, Dorothy, and later his wife, Mary Hutchinson.

Wordsworth’s most famous poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (also known as “Daffodils”), was inspired by a walk he took with Dorothy during which they came across “a crowd” of daffodils.  

Dove Cottage had previously been an inn called the Dove & Olive Bough, mentioned in Wordsworth’s 1806 poem The Waggoner: “Where once the Dove and Olive-bough / Offered a greeting of good ale / To all who entered Grasmere Vale”.

The Dove & Olive Bough closed in 1793, and the Wordsworths moved in in 1799, staying until 1808. Their rent was £8 a year – equivalent to just under £1000 in today’s money.

William and Dorothy created the garden themselves. They used it to relax and contemplate and to grow fruit and vegetables. William thought it “the loveliest spot that man hath ever known”. 

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) started writing poems while at school. With his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he published a collection of poems called “Lyrical Ballads” – one of the most important examples of English Romantic literature.

At Dove Cottage, William’s sister Dorothy wrote her “Grasmere Journal”, describing day-to-day life in the Lake District, the composition of many of her brother’s poems and meetings with literary figures such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Sir Walter Scott.

The first room you enter when you come into the house is this reception room – also known locally as a firehouse or houseplace. It would have been a cosy room, because of the large fireplace, and used for entertaining guests. 

The room’s features are similar to how they would have been when the Wordsworths lived here, with its fireplace, slate floor and dark panelled walls.

When it was the Dove & Olive Bough, this would likely have been the main drinking room. The Wordsworths used it for eating meals and also for some cooking.

The fireplace in this room used to be much bigger than it is now. You can get a sense of the height of the original setting from the position of the mantelpiece.

The Wordsworth family dog, Pepper, was a gift from the famous Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott. The author of “Waverley” bred dogs, which he often named after the color of their furs – his other dogs included Ginger and Mustard.

The kitchen was where most of the cooking and cleaning for the house took place. There is a tallow candle made of mutton fat and beeswax above the cooking range –before electricity, candles were the main source of nighttime light in the cottage. 

The dining table against the opposite wall would originally have been used in the houseplace.

Dorothy describes in her journal baking bread, pies and fish dinners, although maid Molly Fisher did much of the cooking and cleaning. The house that Molly lived in next door to Dove Cottage is now the Wordsworth Museum. 

Coal was mined extensively in the local area. The Wordsworths used a lot of it to heat Dove Cottage. Dorothy wrote in her journal in August 1800: “Thomas Ashburner brought us our 8th cart of coals since May 17th.”

This sink was installed sometime after the Wordsworths moved out. When they lived at Dove Cottage they had no running water or drainage system – very few houses of the time had these luxuries.

At first, William and his sister used this dark downstairs room as a bedroom for guests. Dorothy wrote: “We have made a lodging-room of the parlour below stairs, which has a stone floor, therefore we have covered it all over with matting. 

The bed, though only a camp bed, is large enough for two people to sleep in”. When William and Mary Hutchinson were married, they used this room as their own bedroom.

In the frame with the red background is a small silhouette portrait of Dorothy Wordsworth. The portrait in the other frame is of Mary Hutchinson, William’s wife. Another silhouette (hung on the wooden panel) is of Mary’s younger sister, Sara. 

The portrait above the fireplace is of Thomas de Quincey, the English writer best known for his book “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater”. De Quincey moved into Dove Cottage after the Wordsworths left in 1808. 

This piece of furniture is a washstand, designed so that 2 people could wash themselves simultaneously. Water came from an outside well. Teeth were cleaned using sticks dipped in salt (there are some sticks in the box on the stand).

This upstairs room was a sitting room, where the Wordsworths would enjoy meals and entertain friends. On bright days, sunlight streamed in through the window, from which Grasmere lake could be seen across the meadows.

William composed many poems in this room, pacing up and down reciting them, as Dorothy and Mary hurriedly wrote them down – a scene depicted in the picture next to the window.

William Wordsworth did a lot of thinking on the couch in this room. In his most famous poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, he writes of inspiration striking “when on my couch I lie / In vacant or in pensive mood”.

William’s main writing chair was of a design known as a cutlass chair. Its shape allowed men wearing swords to sit down, and it could also be placed next to a flat surface for writing. 

William’s library of around 300 books sat in a painted bookcase – books for him were to be read rather than collected, and his were often scruffy and written in. He favoured small editions that fitted in his pocket.

When the Wordsworths first moved into Dove Cottage, this was William’s bedroom. Later, after his marriage, it became Dorothy’s. But the family often found they had to be flexible in their little cottage. 

A March 1806 entry in Dorothy’s journal notes: “We are crammed into our little nest edge-full. Every bed lodges two persons at present.”

Framed above the fireplace is the Royal Warrant awarded to William when Queen Victoria made him Poet Laureate – national poet – in 1843. The title was first given in 1668 to John Dryden and there is still a Poet Laureate today.

This is Wordsworth’s passport from his 1836 European trip. Before photography, passports contained written descriptions: “Height 5 feet 9½ English inches tall; Hair grey; Forehead bald; Eyebrows white; Eyes grey; Nose medium; Chin round; Face oval; Complexion ordinary”.

William Wordsworth’s suitcase sits on the washstand. The poet believed in travelling light, declaring that all a gentleman needed for a month’s travel was a shirt, a nightshirt, a pair of socks and a notebook and pencil. 

This picture shows the local hamlet in the early 1800s. Now known as Town End, it hasn’t changed much since Wordsworth’s time, and most of the buildings, including Dove Cottage, are at least 150 years old.