30th April 2025
In this extract from BBC Radio Cumbria, Nishma Hindocha discusses the sale of Rydal Mount with Miriam Margolys and others who advocate for preserving this important site. Please consider supporting efforts to save this literary haven.
Full Transcript:
0:00 It’s 22 minutes past four now and cast your mind back to the English class in your school. Chances are you would have studied a poem by William Wordsworth. 0:12 He’s widely considered as one of the most important literary figures in history and now the house that he lived in for most his life is up for sale in Ambleside in the Lake District. 0:24 It was home to William Wordsworth for 37 years and has been open to the public for decades. Well, one of the poet’s great, great, great, great grandsons, Christopher Wordsworth, has been telling us why they’ve made a decision to sell up. 0:38 It’s one of the many houses he lived in, but he lived in Rydal Mount actually for the longest. He lived there for the last 37 years of his life and it was his family home and it’s sort of been our family home as well because my grandmother bought it 55 years ago and therefore it’s a very, very hard decision to sell. And really, the reason is that my family, my brother, myself, we live a long way away. 0:57 It’s getting harder and harder to run it independently from here, and it’s been very, very hard to get, you know, we’ve got some great staff, but we need a lot of staff, regular staff, and it’s been harder and harder and harder to actually do to put the logistics together. 1:14 It’s an amazing house, and if I could wave a magic wand, I would even live there as a residential home, but actually, if I’m honest, I would love it to remain open. 1:23 It’s got the most incredible garden, worlds of landscape, five acres, which people absolutely adore. I adore, I grew up with it. 1:29 And the house is a real haven of, I don’t know, just literary calmness and, and inspiration. I think. So if it could stay open in some form, it would be amazing. 1:40 Well, Miriam Margolyes, Brian Cox, and Paul McGann are among actors, artists, and writers calling for the home to be saved. 1:48 Well, a little earlier, I spoke with Miriam Margolyes about why she’s calling for the house to be saved. He was one of our very best, and one of our sweetest writers. 1:59 You know, my man has always been D*****. But he’s not sweet. He’s sweet and sour. But Wordsworth has a generosity of spirit and a sweetness of soul. 2:11 And these days, we’re all so depressed and miserable. You know, we need, we need what he’s got to offer. And to see the place where he lived, which is such a beautiful gorgeous place, it raises the spirits of a nation that is in a bit of misery at the moment. 2:33 For you then, Miriam, what does it particularly mean to you? And how many times have you, have you been there? 2:39 Well, I’ve never actually been to Rydal. I’ve been to, uh, Dove Cottage. Yeah. And, um, I’ve been around, around the Lake District because I love it, but he’s not somebody that I know that well. 2:56 It’s somebody that I’m discovering. But when I was approached about this, I feel so passionately that literature is a live thing. 3:06 It’s not a dead thing. He might be dead, but what he wrote and the spirit in which he wrote it, it’s, it’s pulsing thrillingly alive, and we can’t let it just go into private use and deprive all the people who would get something out of being there, because, you know, when you, if you read his, his poetry 3:27 and read what he, and his letters and learn about him, you get excited, you get interested, and to be in the place where he lived, it just makes all the difference. 3:37 Let, let me ask you then, Miriam, that if, if it is taken over by someone who doesn’t care and who won’t open the door to the public, then do you think it’s, it’ll be gone forever? 3:50 The possibility of being in that place would be gone forever, because people who buy houses, they don’t think about, you know, that it has to have a, a life beyond their life. 4:04 And so we’d never get the chance to see that place and wander in those rooms and around those hills and fields. 4:13 No, we’d, it would be gone forever. And that’s why it’s so important to get it while it’s available. But is it, is there a big demand for it? 4:21 Because obviously it’s a big job, isn’t it? And is it financially viable? Because if you remember, uh, I think it was, was it last year, Joanna Lumley, uh, she went massive, didn’t she? 4:30 She backed up and raised, helped raise a lot of money for the Peter Pan house, didn’t she? But then obviously it was bought, it was saved, but it, it didn’t work out. 4:39 What if that happens with this one? You can’t think about failure when you’re embarking on a project. Look, there’s not enough time. 4:49 Money for anything, there’s so many things that are desperately short of cash. I know that. I happen not to be poor at the moment, I’m quite well off, but I haven’t forgotten what it’s like not to be. 5:03 And I don’t think you can start a project thinking, oh gosh, supposing it doesn’t work, supposing we don’t get the money. 5:09 We bloody have to. Who do you think will buy it? It’s a beautiful house, it’s within very wealthy people’s price range, almost anybody would buy it, without thinking about Wordsworth and the connection to Wordsworth, they just think about how beautiful it is, and they could put a little bathroom in there 5:33 . That’s what people think about who buy houses. Holly’s there, speaking to me a little earlier, talking about why she’s backing that campaign, er, to save a ridal mount in Ambleside, which is home to William Wordsworth for 37 years. 5:48 It’s been open to the public for decades now as well, and you heard earlier as well from his great-great-great-great-grandson’s Christopher Wordsworth, who’s been telling us why they’ve made that decision. 5:58 Quite a lot of actors, artists and writers are calling for the home to be saved. Miriam Marley’s was one of them. 6:03 Brian Cox is also included in that as well.