HILL TOP CUMBRIA

A visit to Hill Top, Beatrix Potter’s Lake District cottage, is like stepping into the pages of her enchantingly illustrated books, for Beatrix painted what was around her, from her own furniture and teapot to the doll’s house that sparked a trail of destruction in

Two Bad Mice.

But Hill Top was more than a writer’s inspiration. It brought an unmarried middle-aged woman independence from her controlling parents – and new happiness after the tragic death of her fiancé Norman Warne. Beatrix began negotiations to buy Hill Top in 1905 when she was 39, with the royalties from Peter Rabbit.

Warne was her publisher, and their love had blossomed despite opposition from the snobbish Potters who disapproved of him being ‘in trade’. When Norman proposed, Beatrix’s outraged parents refused to recognise the engagement and

dragged her off on a family holiday to Wales. They never saw each other again. A month after Norman’s proposal, he died of leukaemia.

But Beatrix became a farmer at Hill Top, achieving the freedom she’d never known in her youth. In 1913, at 47, Beatrix married solicitor William Heelis, who’d handled her purchase of additional land. When she died in 1943 she left 4,000 acres and 14 farms to the National Trust.

However, she never forgot her first love and wore Norman’s ring to the

end of her life.