“Rydal Mount, his home for thirty seven years,
became a place of pilgrimage,
not just for the great and powerful in church and state,
but also more touchingly,
for hundreds of ordinary people
who came to pay their silent tribute to his genius.”

Juliet Barker - ‘Wordsworth - A Life’

‘The Wordsworth Family moved into Rydal Mount in 1813 and rented the house continually for 46 years until the death of Mary Wordsworth in 1859. Rydal Mount was the largest house the Wordsworths lived in and became a much-loved family home.

Rydal Mount dates from the 16th Century when the house was a small yeoman style cottage. This older part of the house became the Wordsworths Dining Room on the ground floor and Dorothy and Dora Wordsworth’s bedrooms on the first floor.

The house has good entertaining space and the Wordsworths threw a great many parties in the Drawing Room . Both the Drawing Room and Library contain many original pieces of furniture, personal effects of the Wordsworths and portraits.

On the first floor three of the family bedrooms are open to the public; William and Mary’s, Dorothy Wordsworth’s and Dora Wordsworths.

Wordsworth added the Study at the top of the house while he lived at Rydal Mount. It currently contains a number of manuscripts and books as well as the sword which belonged to John Wordsworth, the poet’s younger brother, and which was recovered from the wreck of the Earl of Abergavenny.

The house returned to the Wordsworth family when, in 1969, Mary Henderson (nee Wordsworth), the great great granddaughter of the poet bought the house and opened it to the public in the following year. Her daughters, grandchildren and great grandchildren regularly stay in the house and therefore the house retains the feel of being a ‘family home’.