The White Drawing Room
An all-white room that opens from the dark hall onto the lake view, and the reason most people come.
GavinJA — CC BY-SA 3.0 · cowbridgeguide.co.uk — CC BY 3.0 · Tim Regan from Cambridge, UK — CC BY 2.0 · John H Darch — CC BY-SA 2.0
A room painted white from floor to ceiling, with a corner window that frames Windermere and the Coniston fells beyond: everything at Blackwell builds towards that one view. The architect M. H. Baillie Scott raised the house between 1898 and 1900 as a holiday home for Sir Edward Holt, a wealthy Manchester brewer, and it has sat on its hillside a mile and a half south of Bowness ever since, losing almost none of its original detail. That survival is why it is now counted among the most complete Arts and Crafts houses in Britain, the late-Victorian movement that treated handwork as high art, and why it carries a Grade I listing. The pleasure is in closeness, not scale. Carved oak panelling, plaster friezes of rowan and hawthorn leaves, stained glass that catches the lake light, fireplaces tiled in peacock blues and greens, and window seats tucked into inglenooks that all but ask you to sit down. The great hall is dark and warm like something medieval, then gives way to the famous White Drawing Room; that deliberate contrast is the cleverest thing in the building. Furniture and ceramics come from Morris & Co., Ruskin Pottery and their peers, and the upper rooms are given over to changing craft exhibitions. In 2026 Lakeland Arts marked the house's 125th anniversary with a major exhibition on its architect, in the same year that Blackwell completed 25 years open to visitors. Practicalities: open Monday to Saturday only, 10:00 to 17:00 from 1 April to 1 November and 10:00 to 16:00 in winter, closed Sundays bar a handful of fair days, and on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Adults pay GBP 12, children 6, under-fives go free, and the family ticket for two adults and three children is GBP 30, which is the figure that settles it for a Gulf family. Tickets are sold at the visitor desk when you arrive, with online booking there if you prefer it, and parking is free, a rare thing around crowded Windermere. You will realistically arrive by car (five minutes from Bowness). Pushchairs are welcome through the house and tea room, with a buggy park on the lower ground floor, but several short flights of steps break up the first floor and wheelchair users cannot reach those rooms. Who is it for? People who enjoy design and interiors, or anyone wanting a quiet hour away from the Bowness pier and its boats. Children are not the intended audience, though Thomas Mawson's terraced garden and the tea room in the old kitchen will hold them for a while. With two days in the Lakes, give them to the water and the fells; with a week and a wet morning, this is one of the loveliest ways to fill it.
An all-white room that opens from the dark hall onto the lake view, and the reason most people come.
Carved oak, rowan-leaf plaster friezes, peacock-blue tiles and stained glass, most of it original to the house.
Mawson's terraces face west over Windermere to the Coniston fells, and the tea room fills the old kitchen.
B5360, near Bowness-on-Windermere, LA23 3JT
Honestly, take the boat first. Blackwell is for people who enjoy design, and children tend to lose interest after half an hour, though the garden and tea room help. Come if you have spare time or a wet day; the GBP 30 family ticket keeps the cost reasonable.
Not usually. Tickets are sold at the visitor desk when you arrive, and online booking is there if you want the reassurance in peak July and August. Parking is free. Just remember it is closed on Sundays and shuts at 16:00 from early November to late March.
