'…as nearly perfect a little place as I ever lived in, and such nice old-fashioned people in the village.'
Beatrix Potter’s Journal, 17 November 1896
National Trust collection
With the royalties from her books, Beatrix was able in 1905 to purchase Hill Top, a small farm in the village of Near Sawrey in the heart of the English Lake District.
It was the area around the villages of Sawrey and Hawkshead that would become home to so many of Beatrix’s best-loved characters and provide the setting for a total of nine of the little books.
Hill Top is the home of Tom Kitten, of Jemima Puddle-Duck and Samuel Whiskers. Ginger and Pickles’ shop is the former village stores. Pigling Bland sets off to market from Hill Top farm, and the signpost pointing the way “Over the Hills” still stands in the lane. Jeremy Fisher swims in Esthwaite Water and in nearby Moss Eccles Tarn, while Mr Tod lives up in the surrounding hills.
Hawkshead’s quaint whitewashed houses and archways feature in The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse and The Tale of The Pie and The Patty-Pan, and nowadays Tabitha Twitchit’s shop is the Beatrix Potter Gallery’s ticket office.
The Lakeland landscape that Beatrix loved so well is as much a part of the fabric of the books as the animals who inhabit it.
'The ‘Ginger and Pickles’ book has been causing amusement, it has got a good many views which can be recognised in the village which is what they like, they are all quite jealous of each other’s houses and cats getting into a book. I have been entreated to draw a cat aged twenty ‘with no teeth’…'
Letter to Millie Warne, 17 November 1909
Frederick Warne Archive
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