The guided tour
The rooms are seen only with a volunteer guide: 10:30 and 11:30 on all four open days, plus 13:30 and 14:30 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
MarcusBritish at en.wikipedia — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0
In 1937 a bus company bought this house to knock it down for a bus station. The people of Cockermouth raised roughly £1,600 from donors around the world, bought it back and handed it to the National Trust in 1938. In 2025 the threat returned in a different shape: the Trust said that run as a pay-for-entry house it was losing significant sums, and consulted on a new model built more around the garden. The town feared mothballing, the local MP's petition gathered some 1,200 signatures, the Commons debated it in December 2025, and the Trust confirmed the house would open in 2026 - on fewer days. The elegant Georgian townhouse on Main Street where William Wordsworth was born in 1770 and spent his childhood with his sister Dorothy, until their mother died in 1778, now opens four days a week, and the rooms can only be seen on a guided tour. The tours are volunteer-led, included in the ticket and not bookable: Sundays and Mondays at 10:30 and 11:30, with two extra slots at 13:30 and 14:30 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Arrive after the last one and you get the garden alone, which is not a total loss. The walled garden running down to the River Derwent is the part the Trust now wants the whole visit built around, planted with eighteenth-century varieties of vegetables, fruit and herbs, with the raised terrace walk along the river wall where the young William played. Inside, it is the Georgian kitchen rather than the poetry that stays with you; the rooms are furnished as they would have been in the 1770s, all of it restored after the floods of 2009 and 2015 put the ground floor under water. How much does this matter to an Arab traveller? If Wordsworth means nothing to you, the house alone does not justify a special journey, but it fits neatly into half a day in Cockermouth, a handsome Georgian market town just outside the national park's north-western edge and far calmer than Windermere in the summer holidays. With children it is better than you might expect: there are period toys and dressing-up clothes in the children's bedroom, and pushchairs are allowed in the garden though not the house. The upper floor has no lift; the lift serves the ground floor only. Getting there: from Keswick it is about 13 miles along the A66, roughly 25 minutes by car; from Windermere or Ambleside allow about an hour and a quarter. There is no parking at the house. The nearest long-stay pay car park is on Wakefield Road, some 300 yards away, and you walk back over the footbridge. Use the Main Street entrance, not the side gate. Buses X4 and X5 run from Keswick and Penrith. The season runs from late March to early November - the 2025 season opened on 29 March and shut on 5 November - and through it the house and garden are closed Thursday to Saturday, with the whole site shut for the winter, so plan the day around that.
The rooms are seen only with a volunteer guide: 10:30 and 11:30 on all four open days, plus 13:30 and 14:30 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Eighteenth-century varieties of vegetables, fruit and herbs, and the raised terrace walk above the River Derwent where the poet played as a boy.
Georgian toys and dressing-up clothes the little ones can try, which will hold a seven-year-old's attention far longer than any poem.
Main Street, Cockermouth CA13 9RX
On its own, no; an hour and a quarter each way is a lot for a house you finish in an hour. It is worth it if you are staying in Keswick or around Bassenthwaite Lake, or if you plan half a day in Cockermouth itself. If Wordsworth is the real draw, Dove Cottage in Grasmere is closer to the heart of the Lakes and holds far more of his belongings.
Yes. The house and garden open Sunday to Wednesday only and are closed Thursday to Saturday, and the whole site shuts for winter from early November to late March. The opening days were cut after the National Trust's 2025 review, and the Trust is still working up a new operating model, so check the official website before setting off - the schedule may change again in future seasons.