2019/20 Annual Review

A year in Wordsworth Country

“ If my writings are to last … they will please for the single cause,‘that we have all of us one human heart!’”

The Wordsworth Trust has been providing a ‘living memorial’ to William Wordsworth at Dove Cottage since 1891.

To help us to continue bringing great poetry alive for people of all ages, visit wordsworth.org.uk/support.

The Wordsworth Trust is a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales, no. 3442086.

The Wordsworth Trust is a registered charity, no. 1066184.

The Wordsworth Trust, Dove Cottage, Grasmere Cumbria, LA22 9SH wordsworth.org.uk +44 (0) 15394 35544 @WordsworthGrasmere

ANNUAL REVIEW

2019/2020

Contents 2019/20 in pictures

Reimagining Wordsworth

5

Learning

10

Acquisitions

12

Annual report

Objectives and activities

14

Public impact

15

Achievements and performance

16

Financial review

19

Summarised financial statements

22

Future plans

23

Our supporters 24 Governance and management 26 Cover: Filming the new introductory experience as part of the Reimagining Wordsworth project Left: Cooling down during the ‘In the Footsteps of Dorothy Wordsworth’ guided walk (May)

Below: An after-school poetry club for primary schools in Kendal at Allan Bank, Grasmere (June)

4

Reimagining Wordsworth

5

The year was dominated by Reimagining Wordsworth, our strategy for affirming Wordsworth’s continuing relevance to our 21st-century lives. Reimagining Wordsworth will bring Wordsworth’s poetry to more people, and in new ways.

After many years’ planning and fundraising, work began onsite on 1 April 2019. Dove Cottage underwent its first major conservation since the 1970s, a new Learning Space and a new Café were created, work began to open up new outdoor spaces, and the expansion and refurbishment of the Museum continued throughout the year.

When the new experience is fully launched as Wordsworth Grasmere, visitors will be transported back in time to the Wordsworths’ years of ‘plain living and high thinking’ in Dove Cottage, and encounter their original words close-up in an expanded and transformed Museum.

Top: Relaxing in the new Café Above: Trainee Tavia Panton leads an activity for families in the new Learning Space (February)

Above: The new Museum takes shape Left: Dove Cottage under its scaffold canopy. Each individual roof slate was removed, inspected and returned to its original position: 98% of the slates were found to be in good condition and only one in fifty had to be replaced

Above: Each individual floorboard in Dove Cottage was numbered and lifted to allow for an inspection of the voids beneath. Electrical wiring and radiators have been replaced with a more discreet heating, lighting and security system, and later fixtures have been removed, including display cabinets installed when Dove Cottage first opened as a museum in the 1890s

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Away from Grasmere, Reimagining Wordsworth is reaching people from all over the world, from hospices in Cumbria to schools in the United States and Mexico. The guiding principle, as with all our activities, is taken from Wordsworth himself: ‘to console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier’. A participant in one project, involving refugees from Venezuela to Zimbabwe, said simply, ‘you create a place for us to be happy’.

Right: Working with the Children’s Society and Glenthorne Quaker Centre, we welcomed refugees from various troubled parts of the world to Grasmere, providing them with an opportunity to explore Wordsworth’s manuscripts and the landscape that inspired him (April) Opposite page: Students from the University of Texas at El Paso help to plan the layout of the new Museum galleries (June) Below: ‘In the Footsteps of Dorothy Wordsworth’ guided walk (May)

Reimagining Wordsworth

7

8

Reimagining Wordsworth

We seek to provide as close an experience as possible to visiting Dove Cottage as it might have been in 1800.

Where possible, we are reducing the distraction of modern intrusions, to give a sense of stepping back in time. Each artefact or facsimile manuscript, in each room, tells a story of a particular moment taken from the poems, letters and journals. Together they give a sense of a lived-in home, in which real people lived ordinary lives and created extraordinary literature.

Jeff Cowton, Curator

Above: Children from Cartmel Primary School help create the new Moss Hut at artist Charlie Whinney’s studio in Witherslack, Cumbria (March). The completed Moss Hut arrived at Wordsworth Grasmere five months later, having largely been built during the lockdown (Photo: Rob Fraser / somewhere-nowhere) Below: Volunteers work to clear the ground in preparation for the new Sensory Garden

Right: Filming the new introductory experience

9

10

Learning

11

With our own buildings closed and construction work underway for most of the year, we took our activities out into the landscape or community venues instead.

Our education and outreach team put on activities in 60 villages and towns across Cumbria and beyond, reaching 7,692 people – from young families and primary school children to hospital patients, prisoners, and older people in care homes.

Meanwhile, the Reading Room remained open for public events and courses for university students.

In November we opened the new Learning Space, and the spacious and comfortable environment was immediately popular with schools and community groups. A further 1,437 people of all ages participated in events, talks and workshops on site.

Above: Places of Poetry workshop (July) Left: Principia College students on a walk with Senior Hospice Nurse Lilian Simmonds before the ‘What is Natural’ workshop (June)

Above: Poetry workshop led by poet in residence, Nick Makoha (April)

Above: ‘Let nature be your teacher’: Arts Awards participants from Roose School, Barrow-in-Furness at Blackwell, Bowness-onWindermere (May)

Above: Assistant Curator (Access), Melissa Mitchell, showing a manuscript in the Reading Room as part of ‘An Afternoon with Dorothy Wordsworth’ (May)

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The collection continued to grow, and we were delighted to receive many generous gifts during the year (see page 25). 98 people used our Reading Room (equivalent to 157 research days), and our curatorial team answered many more research enquiries by post and email.

Right: William Hutchinson, An Excursion to the Lakes, 1773 proof copy with annotations, probably in Hutchinson’s hand. The gift of the W.W. Spooner Charitable Trust Opposite page: Watercolours by William Green, gifts of the W.W. Spooner Charitable Trust: View of Buttermere, 1790 (top); Wastwater, c.1810 (bottom) Below: Harry Williamson (centre), with Michael McGregor, Director (left) and Jeff Cowton, Curator and Head of Learning (right), presenting a gift of two drawings of Dove Cottage by an unknown artist, c.1901

Acquisitions

13

14

The Wordsworth Trust has been keeping Wordsworth’s memory alive at Dove Cottage since it was founded almost 130 years ago.

During that time, it has acquired many of the other historic buildings that neighbour Dove Cottage, secured the great majority of Wordsworth’s manuscripts, opened the Wordsworth Museum, established an archive, library and fine art collection that celebrate Romanticism and the cultural history of the Lake District, and created the Jerwood Centre, a conservation and research centre, so that these holdings can remain at Dove Cottage, one of the world’s most important literary sites.

The Wordsworth Trust’s purposes are set out in its Memorandum and Articles of Association, and can be summarised as: 1. to provide a living memorial to William Wordsworth and his contemporaries by looking after Dove Cottage and its environs, and by preserving and developing a permanent collection; and 2. to advance public knowledge and enjoyment of the works of Wordsworth and the literature and culture of the Romantic period (c.1750–1850) through a wide range of public activities.

The Wordsworth Trust’s aims are the same in their intent as these purposes. They provide public benefit through the advancement of education, heritage, culture and the arts, and thereby meet the definition of ‘charitable purposes’ provided by the 2011 Charities Act. Wordsworth sought through his poetry “to console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier, to teach the young and the gracious of every age, to see, to think and feel”. Our activities are inspired by this vision: of a world in which anyone, anywhere can enrich their life through Wordsworth’s ideas and philosophy, regardless of means or background. In undertaking them, we have therefore taken due regard of the Charity Commission’s public benefit guidance.

Objectives and Activities Our activities, and the criteria that we use to measure their success, are reported in detail under the ‘Achievements and Performance’ heading. We use digital technology, publishing and venues in numerous locations to ensure that access is not restricted by geography. While certain activities are aimed at specific beneficiary groups, most are open to anyone. They take place all year round, and some are free of charge.

Public Impact

15

12 months to 31 Mar 2020

12 months to 31 Mar 2019

Variance

8,270

37,748

-78%

General admissions to Wordsworth Grasmere i Onsite

Offsite

Secondary, primary and pre-school

635

3,677

Higher education – courses

503

-

Young people in formal education (student-days)

Onsite

Offsite

4,312

1,241

6,153

7,394

-42%

503

451

-

451

12%

Higher education – other

33

-

33

520

-

520

-94%

Teacher development opportunities

29

34

63

44

21

65

-3%

1,200

3,711

4,911

2,256

6,174

8,430

-42%

118

1,164

1,282

746

1,816

2,562

-50%

Elderly / vulnerable adults

85

829

914

112

1,066

1,178

-22%

Young people (excluding family activities)

17

229

246

20

177

197

25%

Total Participation in events and activities for families Participation in informal learning activities

General audiences Total Attendances at talks, poetry readings and other events (excluding family events)

17

1,075

1,092

34

858

892

22%

119

2,133

2,252

166

2,101

2,267

-1%

1,498

684

2,182

1,803

401

2,204

-1%

Interactions via new media Website (unique page views) Viewings of videos (YouTube, Facebook) Social media followers (31 March 2020) Total Research visits (research-days)

197,366

118,255

67%

204,684

94,540

117%

44,667

38,753

15%

446,717

251,548

78%

157

177

-11%

Publications New titles ii

2

1

100

222

4,115

-95%

Participants in vocational training iii

14

12

17%

Volunteers iv

24

22

9%

Sales (all titles)

These pages (15–23) are an extract from our Trustees’ Annual Report for the year ending 31 March 2020. If you would like to see our full statutory annual report and accounts, please contact us or search for the Wordsworth Trust on the Charity Commission’s website.

i

Includes screenings of a pre-recorded tour of Dove Cottage between April and August 2019.

ii

Excludes Vital Stream, a joint publication with Carcanet Press.

iii

Excludes work experience placements.

iv

People who did volunteer work on a regular basis and / or for sustained periods of time.

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Achievements and Performance

1. Overview of progress against strategy

2. Public benefit

2019/20 has been dominated by Reimagining Wordsworth, our major strategy for affirming Wordsworth’s continuing relevance in the 21st century. Grasmere residents, students in Cumbria, schoolchildren from Mexico, and refugees from countries in Africa and Asia were amongst the many people from a diverse range of backgrounds whose lives we enhanced with new activities launched in the year. These activities are now complementing our existing programmes for people of all ages, from families discovering poetry together to people with disabilities who find in Wordsworth’s words a means of expressing their own experiences.

a) Measuring our performance

Meanwhile, the transformation of our site is well underway. Dove Cottage has undergone its first major restoration since the 1970s: roof slates and floorboards have been individually inspected; repairs have been carried out; new heating, lighting and security systems have been installed, and the exterior has been rerendered. The inside has been ‘dressed’ with original and replica objects of the period, many of them made or sourced by volunteers on our behalf, and a film has been created to give visitors the essential introduction that the Dove Cottage experience has always lacked.

We finished the year ready to reopen the Cottage as a step back in time, a place to imagine world-changing poetry being written in this humble dwelling.

We also finished the year with a new Learning Space for use by the schools, universities and community groups who come here for both reflection and inspiration, a new Café, and a new brand, ‘Wordsworth Grasmere’, to promote our improved visitor offer. The new Museum took shape throughout the year, as the builders dug downwards into the bedrock and built upwards towards the new rooftop viewing station. The Museum will display Wordsworth’s own handwritten words, in the place where they were largely written, enabling visitors to discover how his poetry and ideas still resonate today. Its opening in 2020/21 will mark the completion of Reimagining Wordsworth.

In early March we launched a year of international celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth’s birth, with a wreath-laying ceremony at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. In the same month we were preparing to reopen Dove Cottage on 7 April 2020, Wordsworth’s actual birthday, our inclusion in National Geographic’s global ‘Cool List’ of destinations hinting at the worldwide interest that this anniversary would bring. However, by the end of the year, Covid-19 was changing things utterly. While museums across the UK were closing their doors, we delayed reopening ours.

Reimagining Wordsworth is a £6.2 million project and it has been ten years in the planning: by 7 April it was clear that we would be completing it in a reimagined world.

We monitor our activities by beneficiary group, as shown in the table on page 13. As well as the statistical measures shown here, we talk to our beneficiaries and invite their feedback to ensure that we are meeting their needs and aspirations. b) Wordsworth Grasmere At 8,270, our visitor numbers were lower than they would be in a normal year, and they reflect the transitional nature of 2019/20, the construction phase of Reimagining Wordsworth taking place over the full twelve months. Nevertheless, we were able to offer visitors a ‘Discover Wordsworth’ virtual experience in the Jerwood Centre at the start of the year, and ‘Dove Cottage Uncovered’ tours while the Cottage was between its conservation and fit-out.

While the builders worked on Dove Cottage, the Museum, the Learning Space and the Café, volunteers helped us to prepare the two new green spaces that will also form part of the Wordsworth Grasmere experience: the Sensory Garden and the Woodland.

We recruited a Head of Visitor Experience and a Volunteer Coordinator – both new staff posts – to help ensure that Wordsworth Grasmere fulfils its potential to inspire our future visitors. c) Formal education Our former learning room served as a temporary shop and ticket point while the new Learning Space was being created. This, the rest of the building works onsite, and the involvement of our education team in planning and opening the new Learning Space inevitably reduced our capacity, so we were pleased to reach nearly 5,000 young people in formal education this year.

Highlights in the year included completing a multiyear project (on the theme of Wordsworth, Turner and the weather) involving schools in west Cumbria whose catchments have high levels of deprivation and described by one teacher as “a huge success!”.

We also provided free ‘Daffodils’ days for nurseries and reception classes, and new ‘Words in the Woods’ activities, our Education Officer having gained a Forest School qualification ready for when the new Woodland becomes available for use by schools. We worked with a school in Barrow-in-Furness during Shakespeare Week, in collaboration with Lakeland Arts, and schools across Cumbria on a music composition project inspired by the Duddon Sonnets, in collaboration with Manchester Camerata, Cumbria Music Hub and Orchestras Live. Our Trainees continued to maintain a weekly reading group for Grasmere Primary School,

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and new writing workshops for six primary schools in Kendal resulted in the poetry pamphlet My Place, one of two new publications in the year.

We were pleased to see a slight increase in attendances at courses for higher education students despite the Reading Room, where they are based, also being the venue for our ‘Discover Wordsworth’ virtual tours.

We also continued to provide training opportunities for teachers, some of them provided as part of the Reimagining Wordsworth project. d) Families and young people We continued to put on crafts sessions and other creative activities for families, including our everpopular ‘Rucksack of Rhymes’, in settings around the county.

This year, venues included Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, the Lake District National Park’s visitor centre, and public libraries in 14 towns across Cumbria. Onsite activities included an eco-art workshop and family yoga, both of which proved the value of our new Learning Space. The total number of activities is fewer than last year, for the same reasons as we have given above.

Our education team also helped with the production of The Wordsworths, a new children’s book, to be published later in July 2020 by Franklin Watts. e) Informal learning Participation in informal learning was in line with last year’s high total, and as always, there is a great diversity of activity behind the statistics. Some programmes are well established, such as the reading / writing groups that take place in cafés and other relaxed settings from the Solway Coast to South Lakeland, often supported by professional poets and artists. Other programmes are new, such as a residential weekend for refugees from various parts of the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. The weekend was organised with the Glenthorne Quaker Centre, which uses ‘human goodwill’ to support asylum-seekers at risk of social isolation, and it formed part of the Reimagining Wordsworth project. We hope to repeat it in 2020/21.

The education, healthcare, heritage and community workers who were brought together by our ‘Skills Sharing’ project in 2018 met again in August to share experiences of using Wordsworth’s poetry to carry out their own life-enhancing work. The impact of this new initiative is now being felt from hospices in west Cumbria to schools on the US–Mexico border. We also maintained our support for the Dove Cottage Young Poets in Kendal, led this year by Cumbrian poets Katie Hale and Kim Moore, and developed a partnership with Triple A Project in Penrith, to work with young adults with autism. Our writing workshops in HMP Haverigg,

organised with Her Majesty’s Prison Service, continued for a second year, and led to an exhibition of drawings based on the themes of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.

Much of the work that we describe under this heading is tailored to the needs of people whose age, health or other circumstances make them vulnerable. By the end of the year our Community Outreach Officer was keeping in touch with many of these groups via digital means, so that we could give them as much support as possible during the lockdown. f) Events ‘Reimagining Wordsworth on tour’, a series of pop-up poetry events in 15 Cumbrian towns and villages from April to August, was a concerted effort to present our programme at its normal level despite the building work onsite, and we are pleased to report similar overall attendance figures to last year.

Literature classes on The Prelude continued for a fourth year; other regular activities included guided walks around Hawkshead and Ullswater, organised in partnership with the Lake District National Park Authority, introductions to poetry led by local poet Polly Atkin, and practical workshops on subjects from calligraphy to knitting.

Contemporary poetry was a central theme: we held readings by Nick Makoha and Anna Selby, our two poets in residence during the year, hosted the winners of the Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet Competition, staged a National Poetry Day party in October, and joined in with the nationwide Places of Poetry project in the summer. We also continued to promote open meetings of the Grasmere History Group and the Dove Cottage Poets. Our most popular events were the annual Wordsworth Lecture in London, given this year by Lucy Newlyn (whose sonnet sequence Vital Stream we were delighted to publish jointly with Carcanet Press), ‘What is Natural?’ in June, run in collaboration with Principia College in Illinois and including a moonlit walk in the Wordsworths’ footsteps, and Simon Armitage’s annual summer reading – his first in Grasmere since he was appointed Poet Laureate. g) Digital engagement Our online presence continued to grow as we added new videos to our YouTube channel, including ‘Tuesday Treasures’, a weekly look at items in the collection, and new blog posts by specialists in a range of subjects. As part of the Reimagining Wordsworth project, we also launched iWordsworth, which is now available online for anyone to add their own research into places that have Wordsworthian associations or that simply inspire Wordsworthian thoughts.

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Achievements and Performance

h) Other performance measures We were delighted to receive several gifts to our collection, the engine that drives much of our activity.

Significant acquisitions include two late-C19th / earlyC20th watercolour drawings of Dove Cottage (the gift of Harry Williamson), timed perfectly to inform our new interpretation, a drawing of Eamont Bridge by Dr William Crotch, after a print by Thomas Allom (the gift of Nicholas and Cecilia Powell), a collection of lateC19th and early C20th photographs of Grasmere (the gift of Michael Rees-Davies), works by the Rev. Joseph Wilkinson (the gift of Charles and Maggie Plouviez, received by bequest), and a generous number of drawings and prints gifted by the W.W. Spooner Charitable Trust, including a view of Borrowdale by Nicholas Pocock.

The breadth of our growing Lake District fine art collection was made evident by our final publication of the year, The Country of the Lakes in 1820 (the essay that was to become Wordsworth’s Guide to the Lakes), which was illustrated entirely by images from our own holdings. The publication was co-edited by Cecilia Powell and Stephen Hebron.

We were pleased to loan items from our collection to exhibitions at the Beacon Museum in Whitehaven, the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery in Carlisle and Wordsworth House in Cockermouth.

Our vocational training programmes also continued and 14 young people benefited, as Trainees, universityfunded interns, and early career research fellows supported by the British Association of Romantic Studies.

3. Acknowledgements A great many organisations and individuals share our passion for safeguarding Wordsworth’s legacy and to celebrating his poetry as a force for good in the world.

Firstly, we wish to thank our four Funding Partners for their major commitment to the Wordsworth Trust: the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the principal funder behind Reimagining Wordsworth; Arts Council England and South Lakeland District Council, whose support is fundamental to everything that we do; and Lancaster University, whose commitment to our work this year has also extended to shaping Wordsworth 250.

We also thank all those organisations that have enabled Reimagining Wordsworth to become a reality, including those grant-makers whose pledges were received this year and are reflected in our accounts: the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (through the Northern Powerhouse) and Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership; the Wolfson

Foundation; the Garfield Weston Foundation; the Foyle Foundation; the John R. Murray Charitable Trust; and Cumbria Gardens Trust. We also thank the many volunteers who have helped us to achieve parts of our strategy, including Lynn Shepherd, who manages the ‘Wordsworth & Romanticism’ blog, Derek Hook and his staff for sponsoring our fundraising events at Yewfield Guesthouse in Hawkshead, Peter Brears, whose knowledge and practical skills have been invaluable in creating a reimagined Dove Cottage, and Tony Mortlock for producing a film to keep our supporters up to date as building work got underway.

We are grateful to the Sir John Fisher Foundation, whose continued support for the post of Assistant Curator (Collection) enables us to give researchers access to what one recently described as “the friendliest archive in the world”, the Michael Marks Charitable Trust, with whose support we continued to promote the creation and publication of contemporary poetry, Children and the Arts, which funded the project through which we gave inspiration to schoolchildren in low-income areas of west Cumbria, and Cumbria County Council, who helped us to bring our activities to every corner of the county. We also thank those individuals upon whose generosity we depend to achieve everything that is described in this report: Patricia Grodd & Michael Stone; John & Barbara Forsyth; John & Clare Spedding; Corinna Wiltshire; the W.W. Spooner Charitable Trust, Tamsin Abbott, Kirsty Anderson, Bev Dennison, Nicholas and Cecilia Powell, the Plouviez family, Michael Rees-Davies, Christine Shaw, Michael Thomas and Harry Williamson for adding to the richness of our collection with their gifts of paintings, drawings, prints and other objects; our many Patrons and Friends; and all those other individuals, across the world, who help us to keep Wordsworth’s memory alive at Dove Cottage.

Michael McGregor The Robert Woof Director

Financial Review 1. Summary The net income for the year, including investment gains and losses, was £2,207,000 (2018/19: £458,000 net income).

The delivery phase of Reimagining Wordsworth in 2019/20 has had an impact on visitor numbers and income, as the museum was closed for the whole year and Dove Cottage was only open for from late summer until November. The further closure of the site in April 2020 due to Covid-19 will not impact our income and expenditure until 2020/21 but it is a huge factor when reviewing the financial outlook. The Covid-19 crisis has come at a particularly tough time as we have used our reserves to support our business during the project and we have missed out on capitalising on reopening Dove Cottage to coincide with national celebrations of Wordsworth’s 250th anniversary.

The impact of Reimagining Wordsworth can be seen in a number of areas in the financial statements.

The delivery phase started in May 2018 following the approval of the bid to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and it is now expected to continue until early 2021. The project was subject to some delays before the onset of Covid-19 but the pandemic has exacerbated those delays as the contractors had to stop work completely for six weeks and work within social distancing rules on restarting. The National Lottery Heritage Fund has supported the project with a 75% grant of £4.1m with the remaining funding coming from a wide range of foundations and individual supporters.

During the year, expenditure on Reimagining Wordsworth was £3,264,000 (2018/19: £498,000) of which £2,998,000 (2018/19: £335,000) was capitalised as assets under construction. The balance was treated as expenditure. Grant income received from the National Lottery Heritage Fund amounted to £2,548,000 (2018/19: £308,000). Other grant income, pledged in previous years but received in 2019/20, is itemised in note 3 to the full accounts. Salary costs amount to £894,000 (2018/19: £837,000). There was a pay award of 2% in April 2019 plus an increase to the national living wage.

Arts Council England renewed its National Portfolio Organisation grant, received as part of the Cumbria Museum Consortium, with effect from 1 April 2018 for four years; the grant has now been extended for a further year to 31 March 2023.

Expenditure against other restricted funds includes £108,000 in depreciation on the Jerwood Centre, which was funded by grants in prior years.

Trading conditions for the trading subsidiary Dove Cottage Promotions Ltd (DCP) have been severely impacted by the reduction in visitor numbers throughout the year. A new café has been developed

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as part of Reimagining Wordsworth but due to delays in the development this could not open until the early part of 2020. In February 2020 Storm Ciara affected the café badly, and it had to close again; its closure is subject to an insurance claim. The loss for the year is £52,000 (2018/19: £10,000), a good proportion of which is attributable to staffing up in preparation for the initial opening of the café, which was then delayed.

The repairs following Storm Ciara will be completed in July and the cafe will open under social distancing rules as soon as practicable thereafter.

2. Investments We own several properties in Town End in Grasmere in the vicinity of Dove Cottage and hold them as investment assets, with the rental income being an important source of revenue. The capital appreciation on these properties helps sustain our long-term financial security. The properties are let to a mix of staff and third parties, and rents are assessed against market rates. One property is a guest house and is let on a commercial lease. Rental income for the year was £96,000 (2018/19: £103,000): this has reduced as 3 Town End Terrace is no longer generating rental income and as there were no seasonal employees this year the rental income on 1 and 2 Lake Terrace was also reduced. In the accounts for 2018/19 two buildings were transferred to fixed assets as they are now used for general business and Old Sykeside is now held as a heritage asset due to its historical significance.

Four discrete investment funds are managed

by Cazenove Capital Management (the wealth management arm of Schroder plc): the Development Fund; the R.S. Woof Memorial Fund, which permanently endows the post of the Robert Woof Director; the Catalyst Endowment Fund; and the Reserve Fund, which is held in the balance sheet under cash at bank. There are no ethical restrictions on any of the funds under management but we have agreed the following statement on environmental, social and governance issues in investing.

The Development Fund comprises both a permanent endowment and a designated element. Due to the restrictions placed upon the entire Development Fund by the donor of the endowment element, both components of the fund must be treated as permanent endowment. The fund overall is invested on a total return basis and the managers have investment discretion to meet a target total return of CPI + 2%.

In June 2020, as part of our reaction to the Covid-19 crisis, we agreed in principle with the donor of the endowment element that some of the restrictions could be lifted. This would allow some of the Development Fund to be used to support us through this crisis and to cover any potential overspend on the Reimagining Wordsworth project.

Financial Review

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Trustees plan to allocate at least £50,000 per year on a regular basis from the entire fund to income in order to aid planning within the organisation. In 2019/20 we decided to allocate £16,250 per quarter. In making this allocation, Trustees have sought the opinion of the investment manager and considered the impact on both current and future beneficiaries. At 31 March 2020 the unapplied total return amounted to £162,000 (31 March 2019: £331,000) in the Endowment Development Fund and £108,000 (31 March 2019: £205,000) in the designated element of the Fund. As a result of the pandemic, the FTSE-100 Total Return Index has fallen 18.4% over the year to 31 March 2020. The Development Fund generated a total return of -7.7% against a target of 3.5% (CPI + 2% for the year to 31 March 2020) and a benchmark of -9.1%. During the year Trustees decided to invest some of the Development Fund in a responsible multi-asset fund and £100,000 was invested. This again was hit by the fall in stock markets and generated a return of -12.9%.

impact of the closure of Dove Cottage during a large part of 2019, there was a trading loss of £52,000 in the year (2018/19: Loss £10,000). Margins however were comparable to previous years. The company has not made a gift aid payment to the Wordsworth Trust for this year (2018/19: nil).

The Catalyst Endowment Fund is invested with a prudent approach to risk to maximise income consistent with maintaining the real value of the capital. It has a higher requirement for income than the development fund, being set at 3.5%. The fund saw a fall in value of £109.8k over the year and generated a return of -10.3%. Arts Council England has agreed to allow us to access the funding they provided for the Catalyst fund to support us through the Covid-19 crisis with the intention that we plan to reinvest the money in the future.

• to allow the financing of a controlled reduction in expenditure should extraordinary events beyond our control generate a long-term reduction in income streams.

The purpose of the R.S. Woof Memorial Fund is to endow the position of the Robert Woof Director. To this end, the objective of the fund is to maximise income while maintaining the capital value. It has a more defensive mandate, but over the year saw a fall of £16.8k in capital value while generating a return of -2.2%.

All our fixed asset investments are managed for the longer term and Trustees remain confident that the long-term outlook remains favourable. The year-end values of investments were hit by the very sharp fall in stock markets in late March 2020 and whilst there has been an improvement in values since that time, we recognise that the short term outlook is uncertain.

The Reserve Fund investment is held as cash and is money received to support the Reimagining Wordsworth project. During 2019/20, £100,000 has been drawn down from this fund to support our cash requirements. As this fund is held in cash, the return over the year was 0.7%.

The results of our trading subsidiary, Dove Cottage Promotions Limited, which runs a book and gift shop and a cafe, are summarised in note 5 to the full accounts. With reduced visitor numbers and the

3. Reserves We maintain reserves to enable us to fulfil our charitable remit by providing for business continuity, security for our collection, and the maintenance of our properties in circumstances where our revenue requirements may not be covered by short-term income. The reserves are managed to offer the best return for the charity while remaining relatively liquid to meet our needs.

Trustees periodically review their reserves policy as part of the risk management process, and they have identified several main reasons for holding reserves:

• to provide short-term support in circumstances where a temporary interruption to income means it is not appropriate to lose the skills and knowledge of the staff team or to curtail our programme of events.

• to accommodate the fact that many of our major events such as exhibitions and conferences are planned, and therefore expenditure is committed, months if not years in advance while income from these events in terms of admissions is not received until after the event opening. This misalignment of income and expenditure is a main consideration in determining an adequate level of reserves.

• to anticipate partial site closure during the delivery phase of the Reimagining Wordsworth project, which resulted in a loss of admissions income.

The level of reserves therefore varies depending on the specific circumstances and cannot be expressed as an exact figure. However, after taking all of these factors into consideration, the Trustees believe a free reserve (funds not tied to fixed assets, designated or restricted funds) of relatively liquid assets equivalent to the external income required to fund between three and six months’ budgeted expenditure is appropriate.

At the end of the year, our total funds are £17,564,000.

Of this £2,363,000 are endowment funds and £5,828,000 are restricted funds which are not available for the general purposes of the charity. The Designated Development Fund of £819,000 must be treated as permanent endowment under the terms of the Endowment Development Fund as described in note

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17 to our full accounts. Of the other three designated funds, the Collection Assets Fund (£3,708,000) represents our heritage assets and cannot be realised with the sale of the collection. The designated Warren Collection Fund of £59,000 is held as cash or near cash and is available to spend at any time on the acquisition of heritage assets. Tangible fixed assets and investment properties held in the general fund totalled a further £11,243,000. To purchase investment properties and fixed assets and to provide working capital, Trustees had taken out a long-term interest only loan of £1,000,000. This loan was refinanced in January 2020 to a repayment loan with a term of five years and a repayment profile of 15 years.

Trustees have reviewed the method of calculation of free reserves in line with guidance produced by the Charity Commission (including reflecting an allocation of the tangible fixed assets and investment properties we hold). They consider period-end free reserves are now £127,000 (2018/19: £127,000). Trustees believe between three and six months’ budgeted expenditure is an acceptable measure for the level of free reserves but had anticipated that reserves would fall to zero or into a negative position during the years affected by the Reimagining Wordsworth development phase.

At 31 March 2020, three months expenditure would equate to £277k. The current level of free reserves reflects the difficult trading conditions over the last few years and the impact of the closures of the site as an impact of the Reimagining Wordsworth project. It also highlights the need for the project, which has as one of its aims our long term financial sustainability.

The reduction in reserves in the year 2019/20 reflects this impact on trading during the development phase.

The plan was that in April 2020 Dove Cottage would re-open in time to celebrate the 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth and there would be a surge in visitor numbers and income as a result of the publicity.

There would also have been a consequent increase in takings for Dove Cottage Promotions Ltd through its gift and book shop and café.

Because of Covid-19, none of this has now taken place so there will be further pressure on reserves throughout 2020/21. We have worked to minimise the impact of the lockdown through use of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, minimising general expenditure, applying for grants and other support where available, and salary reductions through staff voluntarily reducing their contracts to 80%. When we re-open, although the outlook for the group markets is poor, it is hoped that there will be a benefit to us in an increase in ‘staycations’. We do not however underestimate the financial pressure we will face during the winter months and this is why we have applied for access to some of our endowment funds.

Where the money came from

90%

Grants and donations

5%

Property rents and financial investments

5%

Ticket and shop sales

How it was spent

53%

Access and learning

24%

Custodianship

23%

Cost of generating funds

Summarised Financial Statements

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Summary Group Accounts for The Wordsworth Trust

Our current priority is a very practical one: to prepare for the eventual easing of the lockdown restrictions and devise a financially viable means of opening Wordsworth Grasmere while ensuring the continued safety of our staff, volunteers and visitors.

1. Summary Statement of Financial Activities for the year ended 31 March 2020

£000s

Unrestricted funds

Restricted funds

Endowment and development funds

Total funds

2018/19 for comparison

171

3,655

1

3,827

1,226

Income - Donations and legacies

99

-

121

220

225

- Admission fees and other income

209

-

-

209

470

Total Income

479

3,655

122

4,256

1,921

166

229

2

397

408

- Access and Learning

331

548

2

881

758

- Cost of generating funds

343

6

24

373

408

Total Expenditure

840

783

28

1,651

1,574

(361)

2,872

94

2,605

347

-

-

(371)

(371)

111

(361)

2,872

(277)

2,234

458

Transfers between funds

112

-

(112)

-

-

Net movement in funds

(249)

2,872

(389)

2,234

458

Unrestricted funds

Restricted, endowment & development funds

Total funds

15 months to 31 March 2018 for comparison

3,708

-

3,708

3,639

Other tangible assets

1,292

5,358

6,650

3,771

Investments

4,620

3,183

7,803

8,190

Total

9,620

8,541

18,161

15,600

(65)

495

430

757

(1,000)

-

(1,000)

(1,000)

8,555

9,036

17,591

15,537

- Investment income

Future Plans

As well as completing the Reimagining Wordsworth project, we will also explore further ways of reaching people via digital media, as we all come to terms with new physical relationships. Above all however, we will continue to pursue our strategy to bring new audiences to Wordsworth, a poet who this year more than ever we can turn to for both inspiration and solace – the poet who reminds us that “not without hope we suffer and we mourn”.

Expenditure - Custodianship

Net gains on investments

Net income /(expenditure)

2. Summary Consolidated Balance Sheet as at 31 March 2020 Heritage assets

Net current assets Creditors falling due after more than a year Total net assets

These summarised financial statements are not our statutory accounts, but a summary of information relating to our consolidated statement of financial activities and our consolidated balance sheet derived from our full audited Trustees’ report and financial statements and approved by Trustees on 16 October 2020. The auditor’s statement as prescribed by the Companies Act 2006 was unmodified. The full financial statements have been filed with the Charity Commission and Companies House.

These summarised financial statements may not contain sufficient information to gain a complete understanding of our financial affairs. Our full audited Trustees’ Report and financial statements can be downloaded from our website or obtained from the Company Secretary at our registered address.

Below: The Kitchen in Dove Cottage. Reopening Dove Cottage was a major objective for the year 2020/21. Originally planned to take place on 7 April 2020 to mark the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth’s birth, the reopening was delayed to 15 August because of the pandemic.

Original and replica objects, many of them made or sourced by volunteers on our behalf, help visitors to imagine the Wordsworths’ daily life in their bustling family home over 200 years ago (Photo: Gareth Gardner)

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Here we thank all those organisations and individuals who have helped to keep Wordsworth’s memory alive at Dove Cottage in 2019/20.

Funding partners

Other major funders and donors in 2019/20* Public sector

Our Supporters Professor John Kerrigan Mrs Georgiana Wordsworth Mr and Mrs Stewart Douglas-Mann Mr and Mrs Timothy Harding Mr Clive Pickup Dr Elizabeth Poskitt Mr Tony Reavell Mr and Mrs Frank Stirrup Mr Mike Woodhouse CVO

Donations to the Collection

Legacies and in memoriam

Graham Arnold, Dorothy Wordsworth at Dove Cottage on the Morning of William’s Marriage to Mary Hutchinson, painting, 2015

The late Miss May Blenkinsopp The late Mr & Mrs Charles Plouviez The late Dr W.H. Kelliher The late Kisty Creighton

Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership and the Northern Powerhouse Cumbria County Council

* This is a list of grants and donations of £100 or more received in the 12 months to 31 March 2020. Gifts received since 1 April 2020 will be published at a future date.

Other institutional funders

Patrons of the Wordsworth Trust (since 1 April 2019)

The Wolfson Foundation The W.W. Spooner Charitable Trust The John R. Murray Charitable Trust The Sir John Fisher Foundation The Michael Marks Charitable Trust Children and the Arts Cumbria Gardens Trust Anonymous Wheaton College Individuals Tamsin Abbott Patricia Grodd and Michael Stone Professor Sir Drummond Bone Gillian Berry Mr and Mrs John Forsyth Dr Cecilia and Mr Nicholas Powell Mr and Mrs John Spedding Mrs Corinna Wiltshire Mr Robert Cornish Dr and Mrs Adam Naylor Professor Paul Betz and Carol Rosen Mr and Mrs Thompson The Rt Hon Lord Smith of Finsbury PC Mr David Heal Mr and Mrs Trevor Smale Mr Tim Robertson Kirsty Anderson Mr Harry Williamson FCSI Mrs Eira Leach Mr and Mrs Tony Vaughan Mr and Mrs Peter Whyte Mr Richard Arnold Professor Angus Easson Mrs Margaret Thomas Mrs Constance Parrish Mrs Margaret Hill

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Mrs Jan Ambler Mrs Susan Axford Mr and Mrs John Barker Dr Jackie Bettess Professor Paul Betz and Carol Rosen Dr Lynn Bindman Lady Boyd James Brockbank and Louise Ronane The Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry KBE Mrs Mary Chuck Mr and Mrs John Collier Mrs Diana Delbridge Mrs Sheila Edwards Lord and Lady Egremont Miss Veronica Finch Mr and Mrs John Forsyth Patricia Grodd and Michael Stone The Baroness Kidron OBE and Mr Lee Hall Mr David Heal Mrs Diana Matthews JP, DL Dr and Mrs Adam Naylor Professor Lucy Newlyn Mr John Nicoll Dr Deborah L. Pfuntner Dr Cecilia and Mr Nicholas Powell Mr Charles Sebag-Montefiore Mrs Harriette Smale The Rt Hon Lord Smith of Finsbury PC Mr and Mrs John Spedding Mr Harry Williamson FCSI Mrs Corinna Wiltshire

28 drawings and prints, including watercolours of Wastwater and Buttermere by William Green (both c.1810), and a watercolour of the Needles from the Isle of Wight by Philip James de Loutherbourg, used to illustrate the artist’s Romantic and Picturesque Scenery of England and Wales, 1805.

The gifts of the W.W. Spooner Charitable Trust.

The gift of Tamsin Abbott.

Two silver serving spoons engraved by Thomas Bewick and a box of ten metal assay punches, c.1812.

The gift of Kirsty Anderson.

John Scott, Picturesque views of the city of Paris and its environs, published in two volumes, 1823.

The gift of Robert Cornish.

17 watercolour drawings by the Reverend Joseph Wilkinson (1763–1831), including two drawings used to illustrate the artist’s Select Views, 1810, the publication that first featured the text of what was to become Wordsworth’s Guide to the Lakes.

The gift of Charles and Maggie Plouviez, received by bequest.

Two watercolour drawings of the exterior and interior of Dove Cottage by an unknown artist, 1901.

The gifts of Harry Williamson.

We also thank the many authors who have donated copies of their new publications to our library.

Royal Patron HRH The Prince of Wales President The Rt Hon Lord Smith of Finsbury PC Fellows The title of ‘Fellow’ is used to recognise individuals who have made a significant contribution to the Wordsworth Trust, for example as trustees, longstanding supporters or advocates. Fellows are not involved in our governance, but they are important and valued ambassadors for our work.

Mrs Eileen Ainscough Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC The Rt Hon the Lord Bragg The Rt Hon the Lord Brooke CH PC Mr Michael Broughton Mr John Collier FCA Mr Stewart Douglas-Mann Professor Stephen Gill The Rt Hon the Earl of Gowrie PC Mr Tony Harrison Mr Laurence Harwood OBE FRICS Mr Peter Jubb Professor John Kerrigan Professor Grevel Lindop Sir Ian McKellen CH CBE Dr Lucasta Miller Mr John Murdoch Mr John Murray Mrs Virginia Murray The Lady Rupert Nevill Mr Charles Nugent Professor Seamus Perry Dr Cecilia Powell FSA Professor Fiona Sampson MBE FRSL Mr Charles Sebag-Montefiore FSA Dr Lynn Shepherd Mr John Spedding CBE DL Ms Claire Tomalin FRSL Dr David Wilson FCIS FSA Mrs Pamela Woof FRSL

We try hard to keep our lists accurate and up to date.

Please contact Mark Bains, Development Manager, if you find any inaccuracies: m.bains@wordsworth.org.uk.

Thousands of people benefit from the financial support that we receive. Please contact us to discuss how you or your grant-making trust could make a difference.

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Governance and Management

Current as of September 2020

Trustees

Curatorial and Learning

Professor Sir Drummond Bone (Chair) Ms Gesa Brinkmann, ACA, CPA (Treasurer) Professor Simon Bainbridge Mrs Mary Chuck Ms Judith Cooke Dr Anna Fleming Mrs Johanna Goode Mr David Heal Mrs Diana Matthews DL, JP Professor David McKitterick Dr Lucy Peltz Ms Jenny Uglow OBE, FRSL

Curator and Head of Learning Jeff Cowton MBE

Staff Director’s Office The Robert Woof Director Michael McGregor FRSA Senior Project Administrator Marie Batty PA to the Director Catherine Foster Visitor Experience Head of Visitor Experience Stephanie Byast Visitor Experience Manager Jane Affleck Deputy Visitor Experience Manager John Coombe Senior Guide Hazel Clarke Guides Sylvia Bradley, Ruth Eastwood, Phil Hartley, Marian Veevers, Alexander Verey

Assistant Curator (Access) Melissa Mitchell Assistant Curator (Collection) ( job share) Poppy Garrett, Rebecca Turner Dove Cottage Gardener Jane Roberts Education Development Manager ( job share) Bernadette Calvey, Zoë McLain Community Outreach Officer Susan Allen Education Officer Catherine Kay Events Officer Hannah Catterall Engagement Officer Tom Langridge Assistant to the Curator Poppy Garrett Finance and Estate Finance & Operations Director Amanda Pickup Finance & Administration Officer Diana Hendry Commercial Development Manager Alison Magrath Estate Workers Ben Earnscliffe, Peter Foster Fundraising

Volunteer Coordinator Joanne Kieft

Development Manager Mark Bains

Marketing & Communications Manager Emily Burnham

Trainees

Marketing Assistant Dora Anderson-Taylor

Madeleine Butcher, Jenny Hill, Sarah Jackman, Tavia Panton

Café Manager Annie Critchley Retail Operations Manager Michael Mitchell Retail Supervisor Lee Baker, Dean Hines

Right: The scaffolding removed from Dove Cottage, summer 2019

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