Admit it. You’re curious as to what pencils, puddings, and poets . . . as well as Romans, rabbits, and zombies . . . have to do with England’s Lake District National Park, right?
Turns out so many interesting things happened there, I can’t fit them all in one post. So this week I’m going to tell you about poets and rabbits and how they helped make the Lake District what it is today.
The Background
Before the 19th century, remote areas of England, like the Lake District, were considered dangerous. The Lake District’s rugged landscape also made traveling difficult. The area’s first railways were developed to transport coal and iron ore deposits. However, it didn’t take companies long to see the potential of using railways for personal travel, i.e., tourism. The first railway reached the largest lake, Windermere, in 1847.
The Poets
Word spread about the area’s beauty, thanks in part, to Lake District-born poet, and one of the area’s most famous sons, William Wordsworth.
DYK in the first half of the 19th century, other famous poets and writers moved to the Lake District? They became known as The Lake Poets.
On a bright spring morning in 1802, William and his sister ambled the banks of Ullswater. The beauty of the area inspired him to write his famous poem, I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud (aka Daffodils). The magnificence of his native land inspired many of his poems, as well as his Guide to the Lakes, published in 1810. The guide helped promote tourism to the area during the Victorian era. One of those tourists was a sixteen-year-old girl, who visited the Lake District for the first time in 1882. Twenty-three years after that summer vacation, she returned and, with profits from her books and a legacy from an aunt, author Beatrix Potter purchased a 34-acre working farm and its 17th-century house, Hill Top.
The Rabbits
Most of us know Beatrix Potter as a writer and illustrator of children’s books. As a child, she drew her own pet rabbits, Benjamin Bouncer and Peter Piper. The Tale of Peter Rabbit came from a story about four little rabbits named Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter she wrote in a letter to her former governess’ children.
In her thirties, following multiple rejections, Potter self-published The Tale of Peter Rabbit. With its success, she began writing and illustrating children’s books full-time. She also designed and sold spin-off merchandise (dolls, painting books, board games, etc.) based on her children’s books. She was a shrewd businesswoman, but her entrepreneurship wasn’t limited to her books.
Did you know Beatrix Potter was also…
- Widely respected in the field of mycology. (It’s the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi.)
- An authority on local stonework and traditional Lakeland crafts and period furniture.
- A prosperous farmer. In the decades after purchasing Hill Top, she bought additional farms, wanting to preserve the unique hill country landscape.
- A prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep. (Remember, those are the sheep thought to have been brought to England by the Vikings.)
- The first woman President-elect of the Herdwick Sheep Breeders’ Association. (Unfortunately, she died before taking office.)
Lake District National Park
The park was created in 1951, thanks in part to both William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter. Wordsworth shared the area’s natural splendor in his writing while Potter used the profits from her writing to help preserve it.
DYK when she died in 1943 at age 77, Potter left almost all her property to the National Trust? That included over 4,000 acres, sixteen farms, cottages, and herds of cattle and Herdwick sheep. She preserved much of the land that is now the Lake District National Park.
Come back next week for the final Did You Know? about England’s Lake District and its connection to pencils, puddings, Romans, and zombies.