Fell Foot's Victorian park and garden, which stands at the foot of Windermere, has impressive displays of daffodils and rhododendrons, access to lakeshore and boats for hire. In the nineteenth century Fell Foot was a private house, with a garden of rhododendrons, oaks and pine trees, a grand estate owned by the former mayor of Leeds, Jeremiah Dixon. His father-in-law, John Smeaton, who built the Eddystone Lighthouse, was a regular visitor, and from the fell tops Nathaniel Hawthorne, the nineteenth century American author, would have seen the replica of the lighthouse which stands on Hoad Hill above Ulverston, which had just been built as a memorial to Sir John Barrow, Arctic explorer and founder of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1859 Colonel Ridelaugh bought the estate and immediately set about building a series of gothic castellated boathouses along the water's edge to form a miniature dockyard for his collection of boats. His 66ft steam yacht the Fairy Queen was built on the Clyde and transported here in sections, only to be succeeded by the even larger and more luxurious Britannia. Now owned by the National Trust, Fell Foot is to be restored to some of its former glory. It is too late for the house, demolished in 1907 to make way for an even grander mansion which got no further than the foundations before the new owner died, but the boathouses remain and the gardens are to be restored, creating once again the atmosphere of the Victorian Age. Tea room.
Tel: 015395 31273