To the tourist who passes through on the main road in the day’s excursion, Grasmere and Rydal are beautiful—perhaps delectable is a better word—but to see them properly and rightly to appreciate them, it is necessary to stroll along the fellsides by which they are overlooked. At the northern end of Rydal a wooden bridge crosses the stream—Rothay Beck, which joins Grasmere and Rydal—and gives access to a path known as Loughrigg Terrace. This was one of Wordsworth’s favourite walks, and as we follow along the breast of Loughrigg Fell and gaze down upon Grasmere, with its rich cordon of mountains and woods, we can easily realize the influences which chained a man of his temperament to this vale. Away at the far end of the lake is the little village with its square-towered church, in whose God’s Acre he is laid to rest. Beyond and above it is the gap in the mountains called Dunmail Raise, the entrance to Grasmere from the north. To the right of it rise the bare shoulders of Helvellyn and Seat Sandal; to the left Helm Crag—with its shattered rock summit—and further round the wildly secluded valley of Easedale, bounded by the wooded slopes of Silverhow. Truly a scene of singular charm!
Grasmere Church is the chief object of attraction in the valley. A quaint old edifice, its once time-weathered beauty has now been greatly marred by a coating of cement, rendered necessary by the ravages of time and a congregation which prefers to worship in a dry building. The inside of the church is quite old-time, however, and Wordsworth’s lines are still true in every detail,
“Not raised in nice proportions was the pile,
But large and massy for duration built,
With pillars crowded and the roof upheld
By naked rafters intricately crossed.”
The rest of the description is in the fifth book of “The Excursion.” On the north side of the nave is a tablet to Wordsworth which contains a portrait by Woolner with an appreciative inscription underneath. Out from the gloomy church we pass into the sunshine and, whether we have read his poetry or not, visit the sheltered corner under the yew-trees where a simple slate slab bears the plain inscription, and nothing more, “William Wordsworth, 1850,” “Mary Wordsworth, 1858,”—a tombstone in keeping with his simplicity of character and freedom from all that pertained to artificiality. The yew-trees were brought
Grasmere Church
On the banks of the River Rothay.
across the lake from Loughrigg Tarn and planted here under Wordsworth’s own directions. Hartley Coleridge, the genial-hearted and brilliant son of the author of “The Ancient Mariner,” is buried a few yards away under the more elaborate headstone with a circular top.