Wedding Photographer Grasmere — Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s Lake, Helm Crag and St Oswald’s Church
Grasmere is the Lake District’s most literary village — the home of William Wordsworth from 1799 to 1813 (at Dove Cottage, Town End and later Allan Bank), whose lake, the surrounding fells and the village are directly woven into the fabric of English Romantic poetry through The Prelude, The Excursion and the dozens of smaller poems composed in the vale. For Grasmere wedding photography, the village provides the most completely Romanticised natural landscape setting in England: Grasmere lake with its single island, the volcanic Helm Crag ridge above the village (the ‘Lion and the Lamb’ rock profile), the Wordsworth graves in St Oswald’s churchyard and the vale’s enclosing fells together create a portrait setting of profound poetic and natural beauty unique in England.
Grasmere Lake, Helm Crag and the Vale
Grasmere lake — a small, oval lake entirely enclosed by fellside and woodland, with the island’s trees visible from the southern shore and the northern inlet above the Rothay river’s entry point — provides portrait settings of enclosed mountain-lake intimacy that are specific to the smaller lakes of the central Lake District: the lake’s surface at early morning or golden hour, with the reflections of Silver How or Helm Crag undisturbed by wind, produces portrait images of extraordinary stillness and depth. The southern shore at Butterlip How and the lane above the western shore provide the lake’s two principal portrait vantage points, with the eastern fells of Stone Arthur and Seat Sandal rising above the lake’s far shore. Helm Crag — the rocky summit of volcanic tuff whose characteristic summit rocks (Howitzer and Howitzer’s Ammunition) are visible from the village — provides a portrait backdrop visible throughout the vale.
Dove Cottage, St Oswald’s Church and the Wordsworth Country
Dove Cottage — the four-room former inn at Town End where Wordsworth lived from 1799 to 1808 with Dorothy and Mary, the house in which The Prelude was composed — provides the primary literary portrait location at Grasmere: the cottage garden (planned and planted by Dorothy), the low-ceilinged rooms and the approach lane above Town End provide portrait settings of intense Romantic literary atmosphere. St Oswald’s Church — the thirteenth-century church in Grasmere’s village centre where Wordsworth and his family (including children who died young) are buried in a corner of the churchyard under the ancient yew trees — provides a ceremony setting of deeply Romantic and ecclesiastical character. The Grasmere Gingerbread Shop, the Rothay river above the lake and the Rydal Water connecting Grasmere to Ambleside below all extend the portrait settings further into the central Lake District.