Dove Cottage was the home of William Wordsworth from December 1799 to May 1808, the years of his supreme work as a poet. It was built, probably in the early part of the 17th century, as a small hostelry.

Some seventy thousand visitors now come to see the cottage and its gardens every year, but for all this, it remains very much as it was when Wordsworth was living there with his sister Dorothy and wife Mary, when Coleridge was a frequent visitor, and also when Thomas De Quincey moved in as a successor to Wordsworth.

"There is no place, we said, "which has so many thoughts and memories as this belonging to our poetry; none at least in which they are so closely bound up with the poet and the poems … In every part of this little place [Wordsworth] has walked with his sister and wife or talked with Coleridge. And it is almost untouched. Why should we not try and secure it, as Shakespeare's birthplace is secured, for the eternal possession of those who love English poetry all over the world?"

Extract from Dove Cottage (1890) by Stopford Brooke, founding chairman of the Trust