Dove Cottage, House museum at Lake District, England.
Description
Dove Cottage is a literary museum inside a stone dwelling at the Lake District in England, which housed the poet William Wordsworth and his family. Ground-floor and upper rooms display fireplaces, wooden floors and narrow staircases that reflect early 19th-century domestic life.
History
Wordsworth moved into the building with his sister Dorothy in 1799 and stayed until 1808, when his growing family needed more space. During these years he composed poems that later shaped romantic thinking in English literature.
Culture
The cottage takes its name from a former inn called the Dove and Olive Branch, whose owner raised pigeons on the site. Visitors today recognize the dwelling by its whitewashed exterior and the garden layout that poets once used for reflection on birds and plants.
Practical
The museum sits in Grasmere, about a half-hour walk from the village centre, and suits visitors interested in literature and architecture. Pathways inside are narrow, so plan time for movement on short stairs and low doorways.
Did you know?
Dorothy Wordsworth kept daily journals here, recording plant species, weather patterns and conversations that later served her brother as material for verse. Her writing desk still stands in the upper floor, where visitors today look through the same windows onto the hills.
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