| Wordsworth in Furness William Wordsworth, greatest of all the Lakeland poets, was born in 1770 at Cockermouth in Cumberland. John Wordsworth his father, was a law-agent. Anne, his mother, was the daughter of a Penrith linen-draper. A solid lower-middle class background to a backwater beginning to life. The education of William started at a small school
in Penrith and after the death of his mother in 1778 continued at
Hawkshead Grammar School. Whilst at Hawkshead he rode down to Furness
Abbey and later in life recalling his visit he wrote; The year 1787 saw him enter St. John's College, Cambridge. He is noted as saying upon entry,"I had a full twelve months' start of the freshman of my year." At University this articulate and intelligent young man from the isolation of High Furness began to observe and absorb the world that was on the verge of rapid and exciting political, social and industrial change. He was to travel through Europe against the background of the French Revolution and widely around an England opening to new philosophies and industrial development. William Wordsworth chose, after sampling this world, to live and write in Lakeland. The area we call Cumbria, then Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness District of Lancashire, was an isolated place at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Roads were generally poor, packhorses served the interior, busy little ports such as Ulverston moved most bulk cargoes; the all powerful railway locomotive was still a primitive steam engine without wheels or track. Barrow-in-Furness was a small coastal village, a port of sorts with a population of less than one hundred, smaller even than Rampside, a village on the edge of Morecambe Bay with a small reputation at this time as a bathing resort. In August of 1794 William Wordsworth arrived at Rampside to join his sister Dorothy who was staying with their cousin Elizabeth Barker. Francis and Elizabeth Barker lived in a house that stood on the site now occupied by the Clark's Arms. The Barkers house became the New Inn in 1797 and was demolished before 1913 to make way for the present hotel. Francis Barker was a country gentleman with a modest estate and an investment in the Ulverston Canal Company. Wordsworth certainly explored the district seeing Piel Castle and Furness Abbey and becoming friends with the Baldwins of Aldingham who lived in the fine large rectory which today still looks out over Morecambe Bay. His travels also took him to walk over the sands to Cartmel Priory where he found the grave of William Taylor his admired teacher from Hawkshead Grammar School. Wordsworth returned across the sands via Chapel Island and Conishead Priory, writing later of other travellers; "Coaches, wains and travellers, horse and foot", Crossing the sands was, before the construction of the railway, the most direct route into Furness. In 1805 the memory of Rampside with the view of Piel Castle and a painting of Piel by Sir George Beaumont caused Wordsworth to write; "I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile! As an old man in his seventies he found himself defending the lake district against the advance of the railway and revisiting Furness Abbey he found the Furness Railway Company in the act of driving the permanent way though the Abbey grounds. Wordsworth noticed that workmen held the Abbey in great
reverence, in recognition and protest he wrote a poem ending; William Wordsworth died in 1850 and although he is seen as a poet of Lakeland, his footsteps can still be followed in Furness. Piel Castle can be visited by ferry from Roa in the summer months and looks from Rampside almost unchanged. Aldingham Rectory is still to be seen. Chapel Island and the route across Morecambe Bay can be viewed from the grounds of Conishead Priory which is open to visitors and offers a cafe. Furness Abbey remains an attraction to visitors and poets alike. Source: Tourist Information |
