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Reimagining Wordsworth
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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
