Allan Bank

Allan Bank is a grade II listed two-storey villa standing on high ground slightly to the west of Grasmere village in the heart of the Lake District. It is best known for being from 1808 to 1811 the home of William Wordsworth, but it was also occupied at various times by Dorothy Wordsworth, Dora Wordsworth, Thomas De Quincey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Arnold, Matthew Arnold and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, a co-founder of The National Trust. It is now owned by the National Trust and is open to the public.

Allan Bank is designed in a "bleakly Italianate" style according to Pevsner, faced with scored stucco and roofed with slate; it has been described as "large, though not handsome". It was originally built by a Liverpool lawyer, John Gregory Crump, in 1805, and on its partial collapse the following year was rebuilt by him. An extension was added in 1834, perhaps designed by George Webster.

Initially Wordsworth, who was then living less than a mile away in Dove Cottage, was outraged by the building of Allan Bank. In a letter to Richard Sharp he called it a "temple of abomination", and told him that "the house will stare you in the face from every part of the Vale [of Grasmere] and entirely destroy its character of simplicity and seclusion". He soon had to overcome his objections however, since Dove Cottage was far too small for his growing family, and Allan Bank was the only large house in Grasmere he could rent. There he would have enough room for all his household, as well as guests, and his children would be able to play on the slopes of Silver How and the banks of Grasmere lake. He accordingly took up the tenancy in the summer of 1807 with the intention of moving in some time during the autumn, though in the event this was delayed until the end of May 1808. "We already feel the comfort of having each a room of our own", wrote his sister Dorothy Wordsworth in June, but as the year drew on the Wordsworths began to change their minds as they realized that on windy days the various chimneys smoked appallingly. Dorothy called the house "literally not habitable", and complained that "dishes are washed, and no sooner set in the pantry then they are covered with s

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