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Updated: June 14, 2025
Born at Cockermouth, on the outskirts of the district, his mind was gradually led on to its beauty; and his first recollections were of Derwent's grassy holms and rocky falls, with Skiddaw, "bronzed with deepest radiance," towering in the eastern sky. Sent to school at Hawkshead at eight years old, Wordsworth's scene was transferred to the other extremity of the lake district.
Roads lead from Kendal south-westward to Ulverston and Dalton-in- Furness; westward to Bowness, and across Windermere by the ferry to Hawkshead, and Coniston Water in Furness, and to Egremont and Whitehaven in Cumberland; north-westward by Ambleside to Keswick, Cockermouth, and Workington, in Cumberland; north-eastward by Orton to Appleby, with a branch road to Kirkby Stephen to Brough; eastward to Sedbergh, and onwards to Yorkshire.
The women in those days were always young and ever beautiful, but seldom wise and not often good. The men were saints or else "bad," generally bad. Like the cats of Kilkenny, they fought on slight cause. Our young man at Hawkshead School saw this: it pleased him not, and he made a list of the things on which he would write poems.
The church was far too small to hold the congregation, which included most of his personal friends and the representatives of many public bodies. A crowd stood outside in the storm while the service went on. It began with a hymn written for the occasion by Canon Rawnsley who with the Vicar of Hawkshead, Brantwood's parish church, read the Psalms.
In this way Wordsworth received in every sense of the term a liberal education; and when he went to Cambridge, 'he enjoyed even more thoroughly than at Hawkshead whatever advantages might be derived from the neglect of his teachers. The poet had a great contempt for academical training, and refused to go through the usual Cambridge course.
The traveler who takes the pleasant journey on foot or coach from Windermere to Coniston, passes through Hawkshead, where he may see Wordsworth's name cut in a desk of the school which he attended. Of greater interest is the scenery which contributed so much to his education and aided his development into England's greatest nature poet.
Lake Coniston is ten miles from Grasmere, and even alone the walk is not long. If, however, you are delightfully attended by "King's Daughters" with whom you sit and commune now and then on the bankside, the distance will seem to be much less. Then there is a pleasant little break in the journey at Hawkshead.
Restlessly the mother left her room and wandered into Carrie's. It was already by half-past nine spotlessly clean and neat; and Eliza, the girl from Hawkshead, had not been allowed to touch it. On the bed lay a fresh 'waist, which Carrie had just made for herself, and on the dressing-table stood another photograph not a place this time, but a person a very evident and very good-looking young man!
The superb scenery through which we had been passing made what we now saw look tame, although a week ago we should have thought it more than commonly interesting. Hawkshead is the only village on our road, a small, whitewashed old town, with a whitewashed old Norman church, low, and with a low tower, on the same pattern with others that we have seen hereabouts.
The poet Wordsworth was educated at the grammar school at Hawkshead. He always declared that the great merit of the school was the liberty allowed to the scholars. No attempt was made to cram or to produce model pupils. Within limits they appear, in fact, to have been allowed to read precisely what they pleased.
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