Architecture Wray Castle Beatrix Potter Family Home

by Wayne Moran

Title

Architecture Wray Castle Beatrix Potter Family Home

Artist

Wayne Moran

Medium

Photograph - Fine Art Photography

Description

Architecture Wray Castle Beatrix Potter Family Home

Wray Castle is a National Trust owned Gothic Revival castle on the shores of Lake Windermere with turrets, towers, informal grounds and miles of lakeshore paths.

Wray Castle is a Victorian neo-gothic building at Claife in the English county of Cumbria. The house and grounds have belonged to the National Trust since 1929, and house has opened to the public on a regular basis since 2013. The grounds, which include part of the shoreline of Windermere, are open all year round and are renowned for their selection of specimen trees – Wellingtonia, redwood, Ginkgo biloba, weeping lime and varieties of beech.

Between March and October, Windermere Lake Cruises operate a passenger boat service on Windermere from Ambleside and the Brockhole National Park Visitor Centre to Wray Castle.

The house was built in 1840 for a retired Liverpudlian surgeon, James Dawson, who built it along with the neighbouring Wray Church using his wife's fortune. After Dawson's death in 1875 the estate was inherited by his fifteen year old nephew, Edward Preston Rawnsley. In 1877 Edward's cousin, Hardwicke Rawnsley, took up the appointment of vicar of Wray Church. To protect the countryside from damaging development, Hardwicke Rawnsley, building on an idea propounded by John Ruskin, conceived of a National Trust that could buy and preserve places of natural beauty and historic interest for the nation.


Beatrix Potter aged 16 stayed here in 1882 on a family holiday, beginning her long association with the Lake District.
The house has an association with another key player in the National Trust, Beatrix Potter, who spent a summer holiday there when she was 16 in 1882. She bought a small farm in the Claife area, Hill Top, in 1905 with royalties from her first book The Tale of Peter Rabbit. She went on to buy considerable tracts of land nearby, though she never owned the castle itself. In 1929 Wray Castle and 64 acres of land were given to the National Trust by Sir Noton and Lady Barclay.

Since the National Trust acquired the castle it has been used for a variety of purposes, for short time from 1929 being a youth hostel For twenty years from 1931 the castle housed the offices of the Freshwater Biological Association.

Find more details here: https://waynemoranphotography.com/blog/your-best-itinerary-to-see-the-most-of-england/

Uploaded

May 31st, 2023

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