The Georgian townhouse in Cockermouth where William Wordsworth was born, saved from the bulldozers and kept as a 1770s family home
Open to visitorsa National Trust place — check opening times and admission before you go
William Wordsworth was born here on 7 April 1770, in a smart house on the main street of Cockermouth; his sister Dorothy followed the next year. Their father John was land-agent to the Lowther family, and the house came with the job. Pevsner called it “quite a swagger house for such a town”, and he had a point: it was built around 1745 for Joshua Lucock, the local sheriff, with generous rooms and a walled garden running down to the River Derwent at the back, where the young Wordsworths played.
It nearly did not survive. In 1937 the house was sold to a bus company that wanted the site for a garage. When word got out, the people of Cockermouth formed a committee, raised money from as far away as America, and bought it back for £1,625, then handed it to the National Trust in 1938.
Inside, the Trust presents the rooms as the Wordsworth family would have known them in the 1770s, down to a working kitchen and costumed staff on busy days. The walled garden is planted to the period too. It runs as a paid attraction with set opening hours, and the Trust has been reviewing its future, so it is worth checking before you travel. While you are in town, Cockermouth Castle sits just up the river, and the fells of the Lake District that shaped so much of his verse begin only a couple of miles to the south-east.
