Mrs Tiggywinkle Visits Beatrix Potter

Hello, and thank you to everyone who commented on my last post.  You all correctly guessed, I think, that the other special place I visited in the Lake District was Hill Top, the farm which Beatrix Potter bought in 1905 and which she left to the National Trust when she died.  Well really, if I hadn't gone there I think I should have had to change my name!  This was the first property which Beatrix ever bought, using the money from her books and an inheritance, and she loved it for the rest of her life.  This post is about Hill Top and two other houses owned by Beatrix.  It's very self-indulgent and quite long, my only excuse being that I have waited a very long time to visit.  (Actually, I did go to Hill Top when I was twelve years old but the house was closed so I don't think that counts.)

The farmhouse was built in the late seventeenth century, extended in the eighteenth century and the slate porch was added in the nineteenth century - I shall be returning to these details later so please remember them.  Beatrix added a two-storey extension for the tenant farmer and his family, which is now inhabited by the current tenant farmer, and remodelled the interior to make it more comfortable for herself, although she never actually lived there - she lived in London with her parents until she was married in 1913 and although she went to Hill Top as often as she could, she didn't spend more than three months  a year there.  When she died in 1943 she left Hill Top to the National Trust and asked that it remain untenanted and furnished as she had left it.

Hundreds of people visit the house and garden every day and I think the National Trust manages the situation very well, issuing timed entry tickets.  I had done my research and knew that to avoid the busiest crowds, we had to get there either early or late; we opted for early.  The car park is small but we found plenty of empty spaces when we arrived at 9.30am and there were only twelve people in the queue ahead of us, waiting for the ticket office to open at 10am.  I spent an excited half hour chatting to another family in the queue and at last we were given our tickets with the time of 10.05am, which is why we were able to photograph the house without anyone else in the picture. Once inside we were invited to spend as much time as we wanted there and I lingered long after the rest of my family had gone outside to the garden. 

Inside the house the lighting is kept deliberately low, partly to preserve its contents from the destructive effects of light and partly because that is how Beatrix kept it, relying on daylight coming through the windows and, in the evening, on a candle or an oil lamp.  Flash photography is not allowed so I'm afraid the Best Beloved's photographs are not as crisp as he would like them to be.

The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, The Tale of Tom Kitten and The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck are all set at Hill Top and copies of these books are available for visitors to carry around to compare the illustrations to the actual views.  However, I didn't need to borrow them because I had tucked my own fifty-odd year-old copies into my bag before we set out.  Surely that doesn't surprise you?!  So, shall we go inside?

Through the front door we are straight into the room which Beatrix called the Entrance Hall but which Lakeland people would have called the firehouse or the houseplace.  There is Beatrix's own hat upon the chair, with her clogs tucked underneath it.  The fireplace is a replica installed by the National Trust because Beatrix had replaced the original with something more "modern", but not before she had used it to illustrate The Tale of Samuel Whiskers.  (As an aside, this book scared the whatsits out of me until I was about nineteen years old and I am quite sure that it is the basis of my horror of R-A-Ts.)

The other room we can see on the ground floor is the Parlour, a much more elegant room where Beatrix would entertain guests formally.  Please take note of the pair of Staffordshire greyhounds holding hares in their mouths which are on the mantelpiece.

Then we come to the stairs, another familiar scene to anyone who knows The Tale of Samuel Whiskers.

 

 

Once upstairs, there are four rooms to see.  The New Room is actually in the extension and Beatrix called it The Library.  It is a large, light room and the National Trust volunteer explained to me that Beatrix used it as an office as well as her studio.  She painted the view from the window for The Tale of Samuel Whiskers - although the building in the foreground is different, you can follow the lane up the hill.

Then I visited the Sitting Room where Beatrix entertained members of her family and close friends.  The toilet mirror on the chest of drawers belonged to her grandmother and can be seen in The Tale of Tom Kitten.

The Treasure Room contains a dolls' house and although it is not the one which Beatrix drew for A Tale of Two Bad Mice, some of its contents are indeed those which were bought for her from Hamleys' in London by Norman Warne for that Tale.  There is also a cabinet full of treasures and trinkets.

The final room we were permitted to see is a bedroom.  Beatrix slept here only very occasionally and not in this bed, which she  bought for the room after she was married, but she did embroider the valance, according to the guide book: "I have been embroidering a valance for an old 4 poster bed.  I used some old green damask and worked on it with old gold coloured silk." 

After spending a very happy time in the house and lingering for as long as I could, I went outside and found my family sitting in the sunshine by a very special gate which features in The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck. 
 

I honestly had the most wonderful morning.  I was worried that the National Trust might have "Disnified" the place, if you know what I mean, and I was worried that it would be so crowded that I wouldn't be able to drink it all in properly, but my fears were unfounded.  Hill Top remains true to Miss Potter and honours her properly.  This was one of my holiday highlights.
 
After a little meander around the garden, during which I came across the Head Gardener and thanked him for his work (he has been there for thirty years), we went to the shop and bought a couple of nice souvenirs before exiting through Tom Kitten's gate onto the lane.  As I looked across the field I became quite excited and ordered asked the Best Beloved to photograph a cream-coloured house across the field which I recognised -

This is the house Beatrix actually lived in!  It is Castle Cottage, which she bought in 1909 and moved into with Willie Heelis after they were married in 1913.  They lived there together until she died thirty years later and I couldn't understand why we were the only people looking at it. 

Beatrix loved the landscape of the Lake District and was aware that it depended upon farming for its preservation.  A great supporter of the National Trust, who were trying to preserve it by buying up farms which came up for sale to save them from developers but who had no pool of funds and had to launch an appeal every time this happened, she used to buy said farms and then sell them to the Trust when they had the money, at the price she had paid.  In 1930 she bought the Monk Coniston Estate, several thousand acres of land which included seven farms, cottages, quarries and open land as well as Tarn Hows.  She immediately sold half of the estate to the Trust, who asked her to manage their half as well as her own, which she did in a very business-like way.  One of the farms was Yew Tree Farm, which Beatrix considered to be "a typical north-country farmhouse, very well worth preserving".  The farmhouse was built in 1690, extended in 1743 and a slate porch was added some time later.  Does that ring any bells?

When the film Miss Potter was made in 2006 the National Trust was keen for the film crew to film at Hill Top but it really wasn't suitable so Yew Tree Farm was used instead for the exterior shots, painted a darker colour by the production team.  You can find out more and see some photos here.

Downstairs, the floors are flagged but upstairs, like the stairs and walls, they are made of oak which has darkened with time. 

Lakeland farmers were having a difficult time economically in the 1930s but tourism was increasing and Beatrix felt that the tenants of Yew Tree Farm, which is beside the road between Ambleside and Coniston, could increase their income by opening up their parlour as a tea room so she gave some of her possessions to help make it comfortable and attractive: a grandfather clock, a seventeenth century bible box, two tables, ten chairs, a glass-fronted corner cabinet containing Victorian china and a display case containing letters written by William Wordsworth, Robert Southey and John Ruskin.  She wrote, "I have had the luck to meet with a genuine Cumberland dresser, it looks well."  All of these items are still in the house.

Remember the Staffordshire greyhounds with hares in their mouths in the parlour at

Hill Top?  This pair lives in the corner cabinet at Yew Tree Farm.

I really hope these are facsimiles because they are stuck in with Blu Tack! 

The Cumberland dresser still looks well.

 

The tea room closed long ago, although the farm is still owned by the National Trust.  So are you wondering how I was able to see all of this?  Well... it's let out as a holiday home and (deep breath!) we stayed in it all week!  Every morning I ate my breakfast in that parlour, eating off a table once owned by Beatrix and surrounded by other things which once belonged to her.  It is a very special house indeed and it looked after us very well.  If you want to stay there, you can find out more here.

 

 Before we went on holiday I read The Tale of Beatrix Potter by Margaret Lane, researched a few months after Beatrix died in 1943, and I thoroughly recommend it to you if you are interested in Beatrix's life.  Margaret had "the confidence and help" of Beatrix's widower, William Heelis, as well as her family and friends and published the book in 1946, revising it in 1986, by which time Beatrix's journals had been discovered and deciphered.  The book presents the tale of a fascinating woman and I am keen to return to the Lake District and discover more about her.

If you have stuck with me this far, thank you very much.  I have rabbited on, but it's important to me to set all of this down here and preserve this wonderful holiday highlight.

See you soon.

 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x