Cox, Margolyes rally to save Wordsworth's home

Actors support campaign to keep Rydal Mount open to public

Veteran actors Brian Cox and Miriam Margolyes have joined Tom Conti and Frank Cottrell-Boyce in the call for preserving William Wordsworth's legacy. As per The Guardian, the Romantic poet's great great great great granddaughter, Charlotte Wontner, is spearheading the campaign to bring financial backers onboard and keep Wordsworth's home open to the public.

The house is located at Rydal Mount in Ambleside in the Lake District. The poet, who designed the property's five-acres gardens, lived in the home from 1813 to his death in 1850. Although he had rented the house, his descendants bought it in the late 1960s. Since then, it has been available to the public for most of the year. After COVID-19 struck, however, the location saw a stark decrease in visitors and was eventually put on the market for offers over £2.5m.

"It's too often we are losing our incredible links with the past and this is one major link to the past that we cannot lose," Cox said.

"This forthcoming sale of Rydal Mount is a mistake," Margolyes chimed in. "It can be stopped. This treasure belongs to the nation - as much as it does William Wordsworth."

Rydal Mount, which Wontner described as a "living museum", was bought by Wontner's grandmother in 1969. "[The gardens] are where Wordsworth wrote many of his poems and when people get there, there is this wonderful sense of being closer to the poetry," she said.

Wontner added that her ancestor's poetry is steadily becoming more important, given the poet's love for nature and the environment.

She mentioned that her cousin supports the campaign. "We all have the same goal which is to find a way of keeping the house open to people. There may be other relatives who feel the same way and I hope they will get in touch."

A London-based descendant and Wontner's cousin, Christopher Wordsworth, put the house on sale earlier this month. He told the BBC that it was becoming "harder and harder" to care for the property remotely, and that the decision to put it up on sale had been "difficult".

"We think it was his favourite family house. He lived there for the last 37 years of his life, and it was a house where he was certainly most famous and where he was almost certainly happiest," he added.

Hopeful that prospective buyers would keep his ancestor's memory alive, he said, "We've kept it open 10 months a year for the last 50 years, so it would be lovely if the same thing happened."