Greta Hall

A handsome late-Georgian house just above the river, hidden behind Keswick School. It is privately owned and only occasionally opened for tours, but worth a detour even just to see from the outside — the literary heart of Lake District Romanticism arguably sits here as much as at Dove Cottage.

If you can get inside, the highlight is Southey's library: 14,000 volumes once filled the shelves, and he is buried in St Kentigern's churchyard at Crosthwaite just behind the house.

things to do sight literary
A story
Samuel Taylor Coleridge moved his family into Greta Hall in 1800 to be near Wordsworth at Grasmere. He invited Robert Southey to share the house in 1803; Southey stayed for forty years and raised both his and Coleridge's children there after Coleridge wandered off into addiction and lecturing.

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