Set in a very attractive private estate on the north eastern shores of Ullswater, the location is where William Wordsworth was said to have penned his renowned poem ‘Daffodils’, in the year 1804.
“William Wordsworth used to sleep in a particular bedroom there and I still have a piece of the original wallpaper framed as a picture.” – Lady Kagan was noted as saying in a local Yorkshire newspaper in 2008.
The Kagans, once friends of former Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, had first come across the house in the early 1970s when flying their little Auster one-engined plane across the region.
“We all fell in love with Eusemere immediately, it has such a wonderful atmosphere and character but I’m afraid it needs a poet’s imagination to do justice to it. It is light and airy and somehow uplifting, I don’t know why” Lady Kagan, mother of three, now aged 84 also remarked.
The 16-acre site was originally built as a countryside retreat for the slavery abolitionist Thomas Clarkson in the latter part of the 18th century. His tireless work, with fellow abolitionist William Wilberforce, often led to the need for breaks in the rural wilds of the English countryside amongst the beautiful and tranquil surroundings of the Eusemere Estate.
Below is Wordworth’s famous poem.
Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
by William Wordsworth
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I learnt this poem at our headmasters behest in 1968 in Eastwood , Nottinghamshire. I live within 5 miles of Eusemere now and only just realised it is where WW wrote the poem what he did (shades of Ernie Wise)