Formation | 1890-12-01 |
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Purpose | heritage tourism |
Location | |
Website | www |
The Wordsworth Trust is an independent charity in the United Kingdom. It celebrates the life of the poet William Wordsworth, and looks after Dove Cottage in the Lake District village of Grasmere where Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy Wordsworth lived between 1799 and 1808. It also looks after the majority of the surrounding properties in the conservation area of Town End, and a collection of manuscripts, books and fine art relating to Wordsworth and other writers and artists of the Romantic period. In 2020 it introduced the brand name Wordsworth Grasmere. [1]
The Wordsworth Trust's charitable purposes comprise preserving Dove Cottage and its environs, and advancing the public knowledge and enjoyment of the works of Wordsworth and the Romantic period. [2]
The Wordsworth Trust is a member of the Cumbria Museum Consortium, along with Lakeland Arts and the Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery Trust. [3] In 2012–2015 and 2015–2018 this consortium was one of the 21 museums or consortia (16 in the earlier period) to be funded by Arts Council England as "Major Partner Museums". [4]
The Trust's first director was Dr Robert Woof CBE. Its current director is Michael McGregor. Its chairman is Professor Sir Drummond Bone. Its president is Chris Smith.
The Wordsworth Trust was founded (as the Dove Cottage Trust) in December 1891. Its creation followed a successful appeal for funds to purchase Dove Cottage, "for the eternal possession of those who love English poetry all over the world". Dove Cottage itself opened to visitors on 27 July 1891. [5]
The appeal to purchase Dove Cottage was led by Stopford Brooke; the Wordsworth Trust's other founding trustees included Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, Professor William Knight, The Rt Rev John Wordsworth and the Duke of Argyll. Their model was Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon, which had been purchased for the nation in 1847, but part of their motivation was also "the associations, personal, literary and moral, which gather around this cottage". As well as Dorothy Wordsworth, these associations included Thomas De Quincey (who himself had the tenancy of Dove Cottage between 1809 and 1835), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, Sir Walter Scott, Sir Humphry Davy and Sir George Beaumont.
The Wordsworth Trust’s collection contains over 90% of Wordsworth’s verse manuscripts, and the largest collection of working papers, letters and other manuscript material relating to Wordsworth and his family anywhere in the world. It includes each of the 23 surviving manuscript versions of The Prelude , and all of the surviving notebooks in which Dorothy Wordsworth recorded their life at Dove Cottage, now published as the Grasmere Journal. [6]
The collection also includes Lake District drawings and other works by artists including David Cox, Joseph Farington, Joseph Wright of Derby, [7] Thomas Girtin, Francis Towne, [8] James Gillray [9] and J.M.W. Turner. [10]
The Wordsworth Trust began assembling a collection of manuscripts, books and other items for visiting students almost as soon as it was founded, but its collection significantly increased in size in 1935 when it received the Wordsworth family papers by bequest from Gordon Graham Wordsworth, Wordsworth’s last surviving grandson. In the same year it converted a neighbouring barn into a museum, so that some of this material could be displayed. The museum was officially opened by John Masefield. In 1981 this was replaced by the current Museum at Wordsworth Grasmere, which is in a converted coachhouse immediately to the north of Dove Cottage. The former barn now houses the Wordsworth Trust's administration.
In 2005 the collection was re-housed in the Jerwood Centre at the Wordsworth Trust, a purpose-built repository with research facilities adjacent to the Museum. [11] The Jerwood Centre was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (since renamed the National Lottery Heritage Fund), the North West Regional Development Agency, the Jerwood Foundation and the European Regional Development Fund, and it was officially opened by Seamus Heaney on 2 June 2005. [12]
The Wordsworth Trust's activities include staging exhibitions in the Museum, providing workshops and courses for schools and colleges, providing activities in local communities, and presenting a programme of talks, poetry readings and other events. [13]
The Wordsworth Trust also provides paid traineeships and internships, which provides experience of working in a museum / heritage environment and opportunities to gain some of the skills needed for a career in that field.
In April 2018, the National Lottery Heritage Fund announced a £4.1 million grant to improve the Museum and improve access for visitors to Dove Cottage. [14] In March 2018, the UK Government announced that Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership had secured funding to enhance visitor attractions in the Lake District including Dove Cottage and the Museum as part of the Northern Powerhouse project. [15]
The reopening of Dove Cottage was postponed from 7 April 2020, the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth's birth, to 15 August 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. [16] The whole site, including the refurbished Museum, opened using the new brand Wordsworth Grasmere on 18 May 2021. [17]
William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).
Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery is a museum in Carlisle, England. Opened by the Carlisle Corporation in 1893, the original building is a converted Jacobean mansion, with extensions added when it was converted. At first the building contained the museum and also a library, an art school and a technical school.
Ambleside is a town and former civil parish, now in the parish of Lakes, in Westmorland and Furness, Cumbria, England, The town was historically in Westmorland. Located in the Lake District National Park, the town sits at the head of Windermere, England's largest natural lake. In 2020 it had an estimated population of 2596.
Dorothy Mae Ann Wordsworth was an English author, poet, and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close all their adult lives. Dorothy Wordsworth had no ambitions to be a public author, yet she left behind numerous letters, diary entries, topographical descriptions, poems, and other writings.
Kettle's Yard is an art gallery and house in Cambridge, England. The director of the art gallery is Andrew Nairne. Both the house and gallery reopened in February 2018 after an expansion of the facilities.
"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is a lyric poem by William Wordsworth. It is one of his most popular, and was inspired by a forest encounter on 15 April 1802 that included himself, his younger sister Dorothy and a "long belt" of daffodils. Written in 1804, it was first published in 1807 in Poems, in Two Volumes, and as a revision in 1815.
Grasmere is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Lakes, in Westmorland and Furness, Cumbria, England, in the centre of the Lake District and named after its adjacent lake. Grasmere lies within the historic county of Westmorland. The Ambleside and Grasmere ward had an estimated population of 4,592 in 2019. William and Dorothy Wordsworth, the 'Lake Poets', lived in Grasmere for 14 years and called it "the loveliest spot that man hath ever found."
Rydal Mount is a house in the small village of Rydal, near Ambleside in the English Lake District. It is best known as the home of the poet William Wordsworth from 1813 to his death in 1850. It is currently operated as a writer's home museum.
The Lake Poets were a group of English poets who all lived in the Lake District of England, United Kingdom, in the first half of the nineteenth century. As a group, they followed no single "school" of thought or literary practice then known. They were named, only to be uniformly disparaged, by the Edinburgh Review. They are considered part of the Romantic Movement.
Robert Samuel Woof was an English scholar, most famous for having been the first Director of the Wordsworth Trust, which looks after Dove Cottage and runs the tourist attraction now known as Wordsworth Grasmere in Grasmere, the Lake District, Cumbria. Dove Cottage is known as the centre for British Romanticism movement, having been the home of William Wordsworth from 1799 to 1808.
Dove Cottage is a house on the edge of Grasmere in the Lake District of England. It is best known as the home of the poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy Wordsworth from December 1799 to May 1808, where they spent over eight years of "plain living, but high thinking". During this period, William wrote much of the poetry for which he is remembered today, including his "Ode: Intimations of Immortality", "Ode to Duty", "My Heart Leaps Up" and "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", together with parts of his autobiographical epic, The Prelude.
Coleridge Cottage is a cottage situated in Nether Stowey, Bridgwater, Somerset, England. It is a grade II* listed building. The 17th century cottage was originally two buildings which were later combined and expanded.
Jerwood Foundation is an independent grant-making foundation in the United Kingdom. In 1999 the Jerwood Foundation established the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, a registered charity under English law.
Rydal Hall is a large detached house on the outskirts of the village of Rydal, Cumbria, in the English Lake District. It has an early nineteenth-century front facade, but includes some earlier fabric.
Keswick Museum is a local museum based in Keswick in the English Lake District, which exhibits aspects of the landscape, history and culture of the area.
White Moss House is situated at the north end of Rydal Water in the English Lake District.
St Oswald's Church is in the village of Grasmere, in the Lake District, Cumbria, England. It is an active Anglican parish church in the deanery of Windermere, the archdeaconry of Westmorland and Furness, and the diocese of Carlisle. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building. As well as its architectural interest, the church is notable for its associations with the poet, William Wordsworth and his family, and for its annual ceremony of rushbearing.
Lakeland Arts is an English charitable company, successor to the Lakeland Arts Trust, based in the Lake District. It operates Blackwell The Arts & Crafts House near Windermere, Abbot Hall Art Gallery and the Museum of Lakeland Life & Industry both in Kendal, and Windermere Jetty: Museum of Boats, Steam and Stories which re-opened in March 2019.
Cumbria Museum Consortium is a grouping of museum organisations in Cumbria, north west England, which receives funding from Arts Council England as a "Major Partner Museum".