Beatrix Break

In late April a friend and I packed our sketchbooks and headed to The Lake District. It was almost a Potter pilgrimage in fact. 

We are both fans of Beatrix Potter / Mrs Heelis’ work and had spoken about how fun it would be to go to The Lakes and to specifically go and sketch the landscape she loved, was inspired by, lived in, and owned - and any other related places of interest linked to BP as I’ll affectionately refer to her. 

For maximum magic, we stayed within walking distance from Hill Top - the first farmhouse she bought, in Near Sawrey. 

I kept an A6 sketchbook while there and will add another post just with sketches, but first I thought I’d let you know a few of my favourite things from the trip. 

Hill Top

Walking up the garden path to the house

Sitting and sketching the house from the orchard

The vegetable garden, complete with green gate and oh such a heavy looking wheelbarrow

The garden gate that leads to the lane

Posing as Beatrix at her porch (to recreate this photo - click here) - and then to hear a familiar voice saying ‘it is Alice!’ And to see a good friend, my past line manager walking up the path towards me!

Realising how much of BP’s everyday surroundings featured in her books. Her staircase, her clock, her garden gates, the garden path, the porch of the house. Slightly further beyond - frontages in the nearby villages or the tarns or lakes. 

Tabitha Twitchet’s Bookshop (Hawkshead)

This has recently become a National Trust bookshop, situated in the building that William Heelis’ solicitors practice was based in. William Heelis helped Beatrix in the purchasing of some of her properties and over time they became close and eventually married. The building used to house works of Beatrix’s but now is a bookshop. Behind the till is a cupboard built into the wall. On the inside of the cupboard doors are many many signatures. We were told that it became a tradition for the clerks to sign their name there with the date when they left the practice - there are some wonderful handwriting examples there! A really fun thing to discover. It was hear that we learnt about the exhibition that was currently on at The Armitt in Ambleside, so we went there next.

Here are a couple of photographs from inside the cupboard.

The Armitt Museum - An A-Z of Beatrix Potter Exhibition

At present you can read about this exhibition by clicking here. This was brilliantly done as it was about the many facets of BP’s life. It looked at her childhood and family, her drawings and inspiration, her scientific studies, it looked at the era she lived in, what else was happening at that time, her clothes, her clogs (I loved looking at these - I used to live in a pair of clogs in my late teens).

The thing I most enjoyed was realising how much she combined real observations and sketches, with her imagination. 

I was completely delighted and a little bit spooked to find some similarities in my work that I’d been unaware of her also doing. Here are a couple of examples. An illustration of hers called ‘Toads’ Tea Party’ which features toads sitting on fungi, in a ring and they are drinking out of acorn cupules. You can see it on the V&A Website here. One of the first illustrations that I did as a card design was my ‘Cupule of Coffee’ with a red squirrel enjoying a hot drink from the acorn cup (cupule). I love that we bought saw a cupule and imagined the same use.

She had also sketched a mouse alphabet! There was this lovely illustration at the Armitt Museum of and A, B and C featuring mice - see here. My mouse illustration is different, -obviously but it tickles me that we both spent time thinking about Mice and Alphabets.