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WILLIAM CALVERT (1770 – 1829)

Roy Ellis

Roy Ellis is a retired Physics teacher who now lives in Keswick. He is a keen fell walker and a volunteer with the Lake District National Park. When Roy retired in 2005 he studied with the CNWRS and was awarded an MA in Lake District Studies in 2008.

Figure 1: Drawing of William Calvert by Mary Calvert (By kind permission of The Wordsworth Trust,

Dove Cottage, Cumbria) William Calvert (Figure 1) was an influential Keswick character, an agricultural innovator and a close friend of the Lake Poets. William was probably born at Threlkeld near Keswick in 1770: he was baptised at the Threlkeld Parish Church on 5 July 1770. His father, Raisley Calvert, was Steward to the Duke of Norfolk, and looked after his estates at Greystoke. There is a plaque commemorating Raisley in St Kentigern’s

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Church, Mungrisdale. The family moved to Wharton Hall in Greystoke where two more children were born: Raisley in 1773 and Anne in 1775. William was sent to school at Hawkshead where he made friends with a boy from Cockermouth called William Wordsworth.1 The two boys were the same age and from similar backgrounds. Wordsworth’s father was an agent for Sir John Lowther, the Earl of Lonsdale. When they left school Wordsworth went to Cambridge, travelled abroad and lived for a while in London while William joined the Duke of Norfolk’s Regiment (then known as the 12th Regiment of Foot) of the Militia. In 1791 William’s father died, and he and Raisley inherited a sizeable fortune. In July 1793 William Calvert invited Wordsworth to accompany him on a tour of the West Country, all expenses paid. Wordsworth wanted to become a poet but had no job and no income. He eagerly accepted William’s offer and the two young men set off. They spent about a month on the Isle of Wight where they watched the English fleet preparing for the war with France. They then headed west, but near Salisbury their horse dragged the carriage in which they were travelling into a ditch and it broke into pieces. The two men decided to separate. William took the horse and rode home to Keswick while Wordsworth set off on foot and walked across Salisbury Plain. He travelled through very bad weather, rested at Stonehenge and had some visions: an experience which led to the writing of his poem ‘Salisbury Plain’. Later that year he visited William and his brother Raisley at their family farm at Windy Brow on the slopes of Latrigg near Keswick (Figure 2).

1 To avoid confusion, William Calvert is referred to throughout this article as ‘William’, while William

Wordsworth is referred to as ‘Wordsworth’.

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Figure 2: Windy Brow Farm (Ellis, 2008) Visitors at Windy Brow In early April of the following year William invited Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, to stay at Windy Brow. Wordsworth and Dorothy were delighted. They had been separated since childhood. After the death of their mother in 1778 Dorothy had been sent away to live with relatives. They had met up again in Halifax for six weeks but now they looked forward to a holiday together. They travelled by coach to Kendal then walked the eighteen miles to Grasmere and a further fifteen miles to Keswick. William Calvert was away with his regiment but Wordsworth and Dorothy stayed with his tenants at the Windy Brow farmhouse. Dorothy loved staying at Windy Brow. She wrote to her friend, Jane Pollard, saying how delighted she was with the situation of the house. She described, in glowing terms, the view from her window which looked out over the River Greta, Keswick town and Derwentwater. She described how cheaply she and her brother could live, with milk for

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breakfast and supper and mainly potatoes for dinner. There was a terrace path on the slopes of Latrigg, above the house, where Dorothy enjoyed walking and admiring the view of the vale of Keswick (Figure 3).2 They spent a month at Windy Brow and it was during this time that Dorothy first started to copy out Wordsworth’s poems: a job which she would continue to do for the rest of her active life.

Figure 3: View from the slopes of Latrigg above Windy Brow (Ellis, 2008)

Later in 1794 Wordsworth returned to Windy Brow to find that William’s brother, Raisley, was very ill with consumption. William was with his regiment in Tynemouth, Northumberland. Wordsworth suggested that he might accompany Raisley on a visit to Portugal to improve his health if William would cover the costs. At the same time Raisley decided to write a will. He left everything to his brother except

2 E. De Selincourt (ed.), The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Early Years 1787 – 1805

(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 114–15.

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for a £600 legacy (later increased to £900) to Wordsworth. Wordsworth wrote to William asking for money for the trip to Portugal. William responded immediately and offered to pay all costs. Wordsworth and Raisley set off but they only got as far as Penrith and had to turn back the next day because Raisley was worse. Wordsworth stayed to nurse Raisley at Windy Brow but Raisley died in January 1795. Raisley’s legacy was a valuable asset for Wordsworth at this time. William and the Lake Poets When Samuel Taylor Coleridge, his wife Sara and their son Hartley came to live in Keswick in 1800 they stayed with the Calverts before moving into Greta Hall, about a mile from Windy Brow. William had retired from the militia and was building a country house at Windy Brow, which became known as Greta Bank (Figure 4). William suggested that Wordsworth and Dorothy should come and live with him there. He wanted to build a laboratory where he, Coleridge and Wordsworth could study chemistry together. Coleridge was enthusiastic and in February 1801 he wrote to his friend Humphrey Davy in Bristol asking his advice for setting up a laboratory. He described Calvert as a man of sense and originality and a practical mechanic who was willing to lay out a good sum of money for the scheme.3 But Wordsworth never came to live in Keswick and the plans for the laboratory came to nothing. William, however, took an interest in science and invented ‘a water-clock and an instrument for measuring the height of mountains by triangulation’. 4

3 E. L. Griggs (ed.), Collected Letters of Samuel Tayler Coleridge Vol. II (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1956-71), p.

377. 4 H. D. Rawnsley, ‘The Last of the Calverts’, Cornhill Magazine New Series 14 (1890), p. 500. (By permission

of the British Library.)

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Figure 4: Greta Bank (now Brundholme Country Houses) (Ellis, 2008)

William married Mary Mitchinson on 2 June 1801 at St Mary’s Church in Carlisle. The Duke of Norfolk was one of the witnesses. ‘Mrs. Calvert was a clever housewife’ but she was ‘blessed with an ingenious husband, whose motto was “never do today what you can do tomorrow”’.5 They had four children, John Mitchinson, (born in 1802), Raisley (1803), Mary (1804) and William (1810). William regularly attended Crosthwaite Church. His children were baptised there and he paid for two pews. In 1803 Robert Southey and his family arrived to live with the Coleridges at Greta Hall. The Calverts, the Coleridges and the Southeys were great friends and ‘the Greta Hall children and the Windybrowites were inseparable’.6 In November of 1811 the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley came to stay in Keswick. He was just nineteen years old and he brought with him his seventeen-year-old bride, Harriet, and her older sister, Eliza Westbrook. Shelley met William Calvert on a visit to Greystoke Castle. William invited Shelley to Greta Bank. He lent Shelley linen, persuaded his

5 Ibid., p. 503.

6 Ibid.

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landlord to lower his rent and introduced him to Robert Southey. In January 1812 Shelley was attacked by robbers at his front door. Soon afterwards he decided to leave Keswick for Ireland. His last week in Keswick was spent with the Calverts at Greta Bank. William and farming William was active in developing his estate. In 1807 he built a bridge across the River Greta from Keswick to Greta Bank (Figure 5). He also built a zig-zag path to the summit of Latrigg.

Figure 5: Calvert’s Bridge. Greta Bank can be seen in the top right corner.

(Ellis, 2008) William was also interested in new methods of farming. In 1805 John Christian Curwen of Workington Hall had founded the Workington Agricultural Society. The Society encouraged improved farming practices. Curwen had a model farm at Workington where he experimented with drainage and irrigation, developed root crops, reared better breeds of cattle and sheep and tried out chemical and bone

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manures. William won several prizes for his sheep and became a Vice President of the Keswick District of the Society. In 1811, at the height of the Napoleonic wars, grain prices were exceptionally high and farmers were looking for more land on which to grow crops. William decided to plough 60 acres on the summit of Latrigg at a height of 350 metres above sea level (Figure 6). He built a

Figure 6: Latrigg Fell (Ellis, 2008)

new road up the fell side from Greta Bank in order to get his plough to the top, and planted oats. In his President’s address to the Workington Agricultural Society Curwen said: ‘Mr Calvert has given a most spirited example in the improvement of his allotment of Skiddaw … I must heartily wish success may attend this undertaking as it will have a powerful effect in producing further mountain enclosures.’7

7 J. C. Curwen, ‘President’s Address’, Proceedings of the Workington Agricultural Society (1811), p. 146.

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In his President’s Address the following year he said: ‘Mr Calvert’s oats, on Latrigg, are looking well’, but he doubted that tillage at that height was advisable and suggested that pasture would be more profitable. He added ‘I already see the disposition to carry the plough much nearer to heaven than was ever dreamed of a few years ago’.8

Unfortunately the experiment was a failure. The oats failed to ripen due to the altitude and William lost a lot of money. Conclusion William died in 1829. A few years later the Greta Bank estate was sold to Mr Anthony Spedding. The house at Greta Bank was substantially rebuilt and has now been converted into apartments known as ‘Brundholme Country Houses’. Calvert’s Bridge has given its name to the nearby ‘Keswick Bridge’ Timeshare Lodges. In 1978 John Fryer Spedding set up the Calvert Trust to provide outdoor adventure activities for people with disabilities. The name was chosen in memory of Wordsworth’s benefactor, Raisley Calvert, ‘to represent friendship, support and the desire to help somebody to fulfil their potential’.9 The Windy Brow Farm where Wordsworth nursed Raisley is now owned by the Trust.

William Calvert was an interesting character. He had some influence on the Lake Poets, he took a keen interest in agricultural development and he was a kind and generous friend to those around him.

Bibliography Barker, J. (2000) Wordsworth: A Life (Viking) Chambers, E. K. (1938) Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Life (Oxford) Cumberland Pacquet, 28 January 1812 Curry, K. (ed.) (1965) New Letters of Robert Southey (Columbia University Press) Curwen, J. C. (1811) ‘President’s Address’, Proceedings of the Workington Agricultural Society Curwen, J. C. (1812) ‘President’s Address’, Proceedings of the Workington Agricultural Society

8 J. C. Curwen, ‘President’s Address’, Proceedings of the Workington Agricultural Society (1812), pp. 107-8.

9 www.calvert-trust.org.uk, 09/01/2008.

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Davies, H. (1980) William Wordsworth (Weidenfield & Nicolson) De Selincourt, E. (ed.) (1967) The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Early Years 1787–1805 (Oxford, Clarendon Press) Dowden, E. (1951: first published 1886) The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Routledge & Kegan Paul) Gill, S. (1989) William Wordsworth: A Life (Clarendon Press) Griggs, E. L. (ed.) (1956-71) Collected Letters of Samuel Tayler Coleridge Vol. II (Oxford, Clarendon Press) Ingpen, R. (1917) Shelley in England (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner) Landon, C. & Curtis, J. (eds) (1997) Early Poems and Fragments 1785-1797 by William Wordsworth (Cornell University) Peck, W. E. (1927) Shelley: His Life and Work (Ernest Benn Ltd) Rawnsley, H. D. (1894) Literary Associations of the English Lakes (James MacLehose and Sons) Rawnsley, H. D. (1890) ‘The Last of the Calverts’, Cornhill Magazine New Series 14, 494-520. Reed, M. (1967) Wordsworth: The Chronology of the Early Years 1770 – 1799 (Harvard University Press) Storey, M. (1997) Robert Southey: A Life (Oxford University Press) Williams, J. (1996) William Wordsworth: A Literary Life (Macmillan) Woof, R. (1970) Wordsworth’s Hawkshead (Oxford University Press) Wordsworth, D. (1987) Dorothy Wordsworth’s Illustrated Lakeland Journals (Diamond Books)

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