Horror in Hawkshead

A long, long time ago, round about the time of the Summer of Love, we used to stay in the Lake District village of Hawkshead, at the Ivy House Hotel.

It was a sleepy village, full of wood smoke and the sound of church bells, which were so loud that they frightened my brother, who was then a toddler.

I loved it, every inch of it, the smell of it, the look of it, the hidden wild places at the edges of it. I loved the sound of the church bells too. Hawkshead to me was the essence of Lake District.

Strangely, though I have been back to the Lake District many times since, I hadn’t been back to Hawkshead, until yesterday.

At some time after I was last there, Hawkshead was voted Britain’s Prettiest Village or something of the sort - and that has been its tragedy.

Massive car park, coachloads of Japanese tourists - Come to England and see what a Cumbrian Village Theme Park looks like! - and shops everywhere selling this kind of thing:

Almost every bit of character has been carefully removed and sanitised:

The Ivy House Hotel is still there, and still looks very pleasant, but Hawskhead is no longer a real place. If you look carefully at the buildings beyond all the tea shops, Beatrice Potter and Wordsworth souvenirs and Cutesy Crafts, you can see the village it once was:

Many people, I suppose, think that the present Hawkshead is the Lake District. Luckily, it isn’t. The Lake District is wonderful - just not the Hawkshead part of it.