POETRY IN THE HILLS

THE LAKE DISTRICT

While the Lake District was formed more than 500 million years ago, it was not until the late 18th century that the area became the popular holiday destination it is today. In 1724, Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe described it as “the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England”. The tide was turning in 1788 when a priest named Father Thomas West published A Guide to the Lakes highlighting its beautiful landscape. It was soon being written about by the Romantic period’s poets, such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and painted by artists, including John Constable and JMW Turner.

In 1847 a railway was built in Windermere, making the county further accessible to visitors and soon tourism in the area was