Saturday 30 July 2016

Beatrix Potter at 150

Today is the 150th birthday of Beatrix Potter. We visited her home, Hill Top, earlier this week. Hill Top has been left as when Beatrix Potter lived here. She actually lived the last thirty or so years of her life,after her marriage, at the nearby Castle Farm but popped into Hill Top every day. She gave Hill Top to the National Trust in her will with the conditions that it shouldn't be tenanted and her furnishings should be left as they were.


The vegetable garden might have jumped out of Peter Rabbit.


The rest of the garden is a typical cottage garden with flowers and fruit bushes growing together.

Hill Top is a small house with timed tickets. We had to wait a couple of hours for our slot although this wasn't a hardship with Esthwaite Water a few minutes walk away.

The house is fairly dark.  These furnishings were collected by Beatrix Potter and some of the details appear in her books.

These little pieces are not dissimilar to the items attacked by Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb.

The tale of Samuel Whiskers was inspired by the rat problem in Hill Top when Beatrix Potter first moved in. Some of the skirting boards still have rat holes in them although I understand that the rats have long since moved!


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1 comment:

  1. Thanks for this Sarah. I have just finished watching Songs of Praise on the I player recorded yesterday . They featured Hill Top as apparently Potter was a Uniitarian and liked to memorise parts of the Bible. I appreciate Peter Rabbit etc more as an adult than I did as a child. The nostalgia of life in bygone ages is charming.

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