Hill Top Farm

Since we were in the Lake District, we decided to go home via Hill Top Farm. We wanted to visit based on our British Children's Author study of Beatrix Potter. It helped that we had seen the movie, Miss Potter.  Hill Top is the first farm that Beatrix purchased.  She went on to buy a number of other farms.

One totally interesting fact about Hill Top if that 20% of their visitors are from Japan. The brochures were in Japanese and you could buy some books in Japanese. Miss Potter has quite a following there. I do remember being in Asia and see quite a bit of Beatrix Potter things.

We drove through some windy, narrow roads. We saw a lots of hills and fields with sheep. Miss Potter's favorite breed was Herdwick which she helped save this breed from extinction. She was very involved in farming in the Lake District. She was named President-elect of the Herdwick Sheepbreeders' Association, the first time a woman had ever been elected to that office but died before taking office.

 We walked through the garden which was not that big. Hill Top is still a working farm.

There was a grassy field and we counted about four rabbits in there. Beatrix Potter wrote Peter Rabbit before moving to Hill Top. It was from the earnings from Peter Rabbit and four other books that she was able to buy Hill Top.

There was a small vegetable garden which reminded us of Mr. McGregor's garden. We even found a watering can in the garden.

Within the first two years of living at Hill Top Farm, Beatrix had 96 rats in her house. I think those rats were inspiration for the book The Tale of Samuel Whiskers.

When Miss Potter lived here, there was no electricity and running water even though it was available in the village. They did have electricity now and kept the lights low so it had the same feel as when she lived there. She was the last person to live there and left the house to the National Trust for tours. As we entered the house we were given a copy of The Tale of Samuel Whiskers and were told to look at various places in the house to find the actual parts of the house that were the inspiration for the book. We saw the front door, the fireplace and a number of other places.

This was the gate that you see in Tom Kitten.

Here is Mr. McGregor and you can even see Peter Rabbit in the water can.

I am amazed at all the places where I have seen mailboxes even in small little villages.  This was in the village but was also in one of the books.

Would you like a post card from here, I have an extra one or two. The first two people to let me know and make sure I have your address, will get one.

I am glad that we stopped. It was worth the drive. We then drove back south to where we were staying and took a ferry across one of the lakes in the Lake District. The bridges in Seattle were longer than the span where we took the ferry but it was a fun experience and saved having to drive on narrow, windy roads.

Beth