Future of William Wordsworth’s Lake District home secured for the public

Rydal Mount, Wordsworth’s last home, had seen a fall in visitor numbers to fewer than 20,000 a year. Photograph: John Morrison/Alamy

It was the family home where William Wordsworth hosted Alfred, Lord Tennyson, lived as poet laureate and worked on his epic autobiographical poem The Prelude.

Now, after a long period of decline in visitor numbers, Rydal Mount and Gardens has been saved from descending into the “half-choked with willow flowers and weeds” state that Wordsworth described in his 1814 poem The Excursion – and will be preserved by a charity that will ensure it remains open to the public.