The Potter’s also spent several summers at Esthwaite Water, in Near Sawrey, the area that would later become Beatrix’s home.
Hill Top
In 1905 Beatrix used the proceeds from her first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, to buy Hill Top, a small working farm in the village of Near Sawrey. Beatrix made regular trips here from London, filling it with mementos, antiques and paintings and tending to the cottage garden. Beatrix would come to Hill Top to write and paint, and she used the house itself and the surrounding countryside as inspiration for many of her books.
It was at Hill Top Beatrix grew her interest in farming, working with her farm manager John Cannon to extend the farmhouse and grow the farm stock, becoming an expert on the local traditional breed of sheep, the Herdwick.
Farming and Herdwick sheep
Purchasing Hill Top was the beginning of Beatrix’s transformation from a London writer and artist to a Cumbrian farmer. In 1923 she bought one of the largest farms in the Lake District, Troutbeck Park farm, in the Troutbeck valley, to save it from possible development. She took over the management of the farm herself, buying neighbouring farms and employing a local shepherd, Tom Storey to help her breed Herdwick sheep.
Herdwick’s had grazed the Lakeland fells for centuries, but the breed was under threat. Beatrix did much to safeguard and promote the Herdwick breed and was the first woman to be elected president of the Herdwick Sheep Breeders Association, set up by Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley in 1889.