Cockayne

On the 15th April 1802, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote in her diary:

Thursday 15th. It was a threatening, misty morning— but mild We set off after dinner from Eusmere— Mrs Clarkson went a short way with us, but turned back. The wind was furious & we thought we must have returned. We first rested in the large boat-house then under a furze Bush opposite Mr Clarksons, saw the plough going in the field. The wind seized our breath. The Lake was rough.

There was a Boat by itself floating in the middle of the Bay below Water Millock— We rested again in the Water Millock lane. The hawthornes are black & green. The birches here & there, greenish but there is yet more of purple to be seen on the Twigs. We got over into a field to avoid some cows— people working, a few primroses by the roadside, woodsorrel flowers, the anenome, scentless violets, strawberries, and that starry, yellow flower which Mrs C calls pile wort.

When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park, we saw a few daffodils close to the water side, we fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore & that the little colony had so sprung up— But as we went along there were more & yet more & at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road.

I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about & about them, Some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness & the rest tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing. This wind blew directly over the Lake to them. There was here & there a little knot & a few stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity & unity & life of that one busy highway—

Dorothy was walking home to Grasmere with her brother, William, after having stayed with their friend, Mrs Clarkson. Two years later William Wordsworth penned his most famous poem, ‘I wandered lonely as a Cloud’ which he first published in 1807.

A glorious day and a fine display of wild daffodils, Narcissus pseudonarcissus, alongside an un-named beck at Cockayne in Bransdale.

Incidentally, Mrs Clarkson, was Catherine Clarkson, the wife of Thomas Clarkson, the abolitionist. They had built their house at Eusmere in the Lakes because of Thomas’s health problems.