Blackwell, Arts and Crafts house, Lake District

Posted on 26 September 2024 by Katrina

So here we are back at Blackwell again, but we’re in a very different setting now. The hall is almost medieval in design and is quite dark. The architect deliberately designed the rooms so that you were moving from dark oak panelling through this corridor to light, very light indeed.

So much in this beautiful room is similar (ish) to Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House in Helensburgh. Again there are sitting neuks by the fireplace, perfect for curling up with a book. I’m fairly sure that the frieze at the top of the wall and the ceiling is papered with Lincrusta, a kind of wallpaper which incorporates plaster designs sandwiched between the paper. It’s on the ceiling too, a fairly inexpensive way of adding luxury to a room, I think you can still buy it today.

The corner cupboard below is flanked by two stylised trees, natural motifs are all around the house in the decor, particularly rowan berries, and apparently when the house was taken over after a long period of neglect there was a rowan sapling growing inside this cupboard!

I think all of the rooms have window seats.

But the white room has two window seats, one with a view of the garden, above and a great view of Lake Windermere below.

It’s such a shame that Blackwell was never a real family home, just a holiday house for a short time in the summer. The pottery in this room is by Willem de Morgan – it’s stunning.

Blackwell, an Arts and Crafts house, Lake District

Posted on 22 September 2024 by Katrina

When we were in the Lake District a few weeks ago one of the places on our list to visit was Blackwell, an Arts and Crafts house. I must admit that I hadn’t even heard of it until quite recently. It’s an absolute jewel.

Blackwell has always been a holiday home which is really sad, it would have made a wonderful family home although I suppose the winters in the Lake District can be quite grim. The house was designed by Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott. It’s not far from Bowness on Windermere.

The photos above and below are of the Hall. The stained glass design of tulips and blue birds looks much better in reality.

The hall is a large room, you could easily hold a dance in it. The copper lighting is original as is the peacock frieze at the top of the walls. This is actually wallpaper which has been recently refurbished. As you can just see on the left there’s another cosy seating area.

We joined in a guided tour which was interesting. Some of the designs are very reminiscent of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, he and Baillie Scott were designing at around the same time and were often competing for the same commissions. Of course Baillie Scott was also of Scottish descent.

The hall is a bit of a mixture of Tudor style, with its oak panelling and early 20th century styling. The guide thought that the fireplace was a nod towards Art Deco although the house is a bit early for that, the Dutch Delft tiles around the fireplace seemed a bit incongruous in the setting, but they are attractive. Every house should have at least one window seat I think, and this house has a few. They are perfect for reading in but the scenery outside might be a bit too distracting.

Or you could sit in the window below, the light should be good anyway.

This part of the house is quite dark, it was deliberate, to contrast with the bright light of the rest of the downstairs, but I’ll leave that for another post.

Blackwell stands above Lake Windermere, below is a view from the driveway towards the lake.

Brantwood, Coniston Water, Lake District

Posted on 20 September 2024 by Katrina

A couple of weeks ago we drove to the Lake District which we hadn’t visited for about ten years. One of the first places we went to was Brantwood, the house which John Ruskin had built above Coniston Water.

It was a great choice of location.

It isn’t a terrifically grand house, I think it could be comfortable, which you can’t say for all such places. It’s often used for art and nature exhibitions. The rug and dress displayed in the photo below were made of nettles, something which they did during World War 2 as fabric was so scarce, These items looked like they had been made out of fine linen, I was agreeably surprised.

The dining room table below had been set using modern pottery by quite a well known potter I believe, so not in keeping with the house but good for exhibiting purposes.

Ruskin was a keen collector of ‘stuff’ beginning as many of us do with shells and stones.

But his collection is somewhat different from mine!

Ruskin’s bedroom below is very much a bachelor’s room. Originally there were paintings by Turner on the walls but they were sold off after his death, these ones are copies, but they’re really good.

The little bay window below is a tiny room just off his bedroom, there’s only really space for one armchair in it but it would be the perfect place to sit and read, if you could tear your attention away from the scenery.

There are various other buildings around the house which are used for exhibitions or for teaching. Below is a textile exhibition with nettle fabric, wool and silk.

There’s no doubt that John Ruskin was a strange man, sadly he’s probably best known nowadays for not consummating his marriage with poor Effie Gray. But he was an artist, writer, art critic, he was interested in so many things. I suppose he was either gay, just not interested in sex, but wanted to possess his lovely wife, just as he possessed other ‘things’. There’s no doubt that he was a handsome chap himself. You can read more about him here. I’ve only just realised that his parents were Scottish.

The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff

Posted on 25 July 2021 by Katrina

The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff was first published in 1956 and I hadn’t even heard of it until I saw it fairly recently in a secondhand bookshop in St Andrews, but it turned out to be great read – as Sutcliff’s books generally are.

The setting is the English Lake District, a place that I’ve enjoyed visiting quite a few times, but the next time I visit I’ll be looking at the landscape in an entirely different way, imagining all the things that were going on there as those of Viking descent who had settled there fought the Normans over a thirty year period or more. The Normans who had fairly easily overcome the inhabitants of the southern half of England in the softer landscape found it to be a much more difficult task in the northern wilds of the Lake District which seemed to be sheltered by a ring of mountainous terrain.

I must admit that I had no idea the famous Domesday Book that we hear about so often stopped short of the Cumberland Fells so there is no mention of Lake Land at all. I can imagine that it must have been one of those areas that on old maps would have been marked – HERE BE DRAGONS.

The book begins with the not quite five year old Frytha witnessing the burning of her village by Norman William’s men. Frytha had been out and about in the woods with Grim her father’s shepherd/man of all work, when they realised that the woodland around them felt different. The birds and animals had fallen silent because the Normans had arrived and were busy slashing and burning. Grin knew there would be no survivors so he took Frytha further north into the Lake Land where she was quickly adopted by a local family. It’s the last stronghold of the Vikings who are constantly honing their battle skills to ward off the Normans who have built a stronghold at Carlisle.

Frytha quickly finds a friend in Bjorn who is just a few years older than she is, it turns into a great relationship with the two of them facing danger together in later years as they team up to do their bit to help out their community agains the Normans.

Rosemary Sutcliff was such a lovely writer of well researched books, and I certainly always learn new things of interest in them.

Grasmere, Lake District

Posted on 12 October 2018 by Katrina

Grasmere is very touristy, click the link to see some lovely photos and read about the area. The first time we went there though I was quite surprised that the lake isn’t lapping the houses though. It’s a fair wee walk from the centre of the small town to the lake if you aren’t used to much walking.

If you go to Grasmere you really have to buy some Grasmere gingerbread, it is very tasty and is unlike any other gingerberad I’ve had. It isn’t soft for one thing, but I thought it was different from the last batch we sampled a few years ago. Possibly it’s one of those things that’s never the same twice and depends on how many clouds are in the sky! Or is that just a chemist’s excuse?

As lakes go it’s nice enough but not a patch on Coniston which has links with Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons books. But more about that later.

The aerial photo below is from the Visit Cumbria site.
grasmere

Around Grasmere, Lake District

Posted on 11 October 2018 by Katrina

The photos below are of the view we had from the window of our hotel room just outside Grasmere in the Lake District. I took these ones in the morning, but I was so annoyed when I looked out of it because when we arrived the night before it had been full of unusual grey fleeced sheep, and I didn’t take a photo of them as I thought the light wasn’t good enough.

I’m not great at getting to sleep when I’m away from home and I wasn’t helped by the sound of an owl hoo-oo-ooting. It must have been sitting on the roof directly above our bed, but it sounded like it was sitting on the bedhead, and it was one of those spooky sounding owls. It went on for quite a while only stopping now and again when I imagine it must have flown off on a hunting expedition, before alighting above us again. It was definitely a different experience.

Very early in the morning I had been woken up by some dogs barking outside and I did think in a woolly way that they must have been sheep dogs and my brain just didn’t click to the fact that they were rounding the sheep up, taking them to new pastures – I hope.

The view of across the road from the hotel is really quite different as you can see.

It’s much more mountainous although maybe I should say craggy as by Scottish standards these are really just hills. I love the stone built farm buildings they have in this area.

The Lake District does seem a bit like a mini Scotland – with loads more tourists. It’s not really that far from the ‘debatable lands’ of the Scottish Borders which were always being fought over.

I took some photos of the types of houses that are in Grasmere. The one below is so wonderfully craggy and solid looking and I’ve never seen chimney stacks like that before. This house is close to Dove Cottage.

In complete contrast whitewashed houses like the one below always seem quite fragile to me and remind me of iced cakes. I’ll be completely un-pc and say that as I often think of houses as having characters then the top craggy one is definitely male whilst the whitewashed one is veering towards femininity!

The burn/stream below edges the graveyard that the Wordsworths are buried in. I did take a photo of the lovely wee bridge over it but sadly it came out all blurred.

If you want to see more images of the village of Grasmere have a look here.

Dove Cottage, Grasmere, Lake District

Posted on 8 October 2018 by Katrina

By the time we reached Grasmere last week dusk was beginning to fall, and as our hotel was a mile or so outside the village we drove into Grasmere and parked outside Dove Cottage, the home of William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy to begin with and then after he got married they had to eventually squash five kids in there too.

When the Wordsworths lived in the cottage there were none of the buildings around it that you see now, and they had an unrestricted view of the lake.

I was really glad that we decided to have a snoop around after the cottage was closed as we had it to ourselves and were able to look around the garden in peace.

The garden is situated on a sloping site, it’s a bit neglected at the moment, I think they must be in need of some gardening volunteers, it’s a pity I live too far away!

Steps lead up to what was a favourite spot with Wordsworth, this refurbished summer gazebo.

Back down close to the cottage some vegetables are being grown in the area where apparently an outhouse had stood in Wordsworth’s day. As it’s only a few steps from the cottage it must have been the earth closet. That would have been particularly handy as originally the cottage had been a pub and William and Dorothy were the first people to live in it as a home.

It’s a tiny cottage and it’s very dark downstairs and would have been even darker in Wordsworth’s day as the windows have been enlarged since then. We didn’t manage to get any photos of the downstairs but it consists of a small kitchen, a buttery which is a teeny wee room where they stored perishable food and a small living room which must have been used as a bedroom when all the children began to arrive. It feels a lot colder than the kitchen and you can hear the stream which flows underneath it. When it was in use they probably prised one of the slates up from the floor so they could place a container of milk in it to keep it fresh. They must have got their water from there too. There’s a small living room, quite cosy really.

Upstairs there are three small bedrooms. The one below was William’s, it was very cold upstairs as the fireplace couldn’t be used, the room quickly filled with smoke apparently.

Dorothy chose thie tiny room below. In her day she papered the walls with old newspapers, presumably in an effort to insulate the place. It has been repapered since then but as you can see the damp is coming through badly. There is no fireplace in this room and it is directly above the cold buttery. I can see why she chose it though as it’s at least private, you have to walk through the other bedroom to get into this one.

The upstairs sitting room is lovely and bright and the furniture and china did actually belong to the Wordsworths.

Normally the cottage housed eight people, the five children, William, Mary his wife, Dorothy his sister and another female relative and Dorothy wrote in her diary that at one point there were fifteen people staying in the house, it’s one way of keeping warm I suppose!

Sir Walter Scott visited them and I can just imagine his astonishment at the size and simplicity of the place. But Wordsworth was very happy here and although they did later move to a house in nearby Rydal, in the end they all came back to Grasmere to be buried.

There are lots of Wordsworths in the graveyard.

The entry charge also includes a visit to the nearby Wordsworth museum which is very interesting and contains a lot of personal things, including Wordsworth’s dental ‘pokey’ things and some of his clothes.

We were really glad that we had visited the exterior of the house earlier as by the time we got there just before the cottage opened in the morning hordes of foreign students turned up just behind us, luckily we managed to get in just before they did, otherwise we couldn’t have taken any photos at all. They were Dutch I think, so surprising as I wouldn’t have thought Wordsworth would be well known there.

Edinburgh from Kirkcaldy

Posted on 11 September 2011 by Katrina

I had to walk along to Tesco the other day to buy some milk and as it was a really lovely bright evening I decided to take the scenic route home along the esplanade. I had been painting walls all day so I really needed to get the smell of emulsion paint out of my lungs. This is the view of Edinburgh from the esplanade.

Arthur’s Seat was clearly in view, which isn’t always the way of it and if you look at the photo below it’s the darkest, tallest hill towards the right hand side. We still haven’t climbed it yet but plan to before the winter closes in on us. We’ve still to visit the Royal Yacht Britannia too, I didn’t fancy going around it during festival time because it’s bound to be really busy then.

It’s not too bad looking I suppose but if you want to see some really lovely images take a look at Duncan’s photos on doctorvee. He stopped off at the Lake District recently on his way to the south of England. I haven’t been there for years but his photos make me think that I’ve been missing something. I think I’ll be adding the Lake District to our list of places to visit and re-visit!

Pining for the West

Meanderings about recipes, books, craft and more

Tag Archives: Lake District