Hill Top, Cumbria

Hill Top once belonged to Beatrix Potter, the children's author and illustrator known for a series of small format books, especially the character Peter Rabbit. Potter bought the house and its 34 acre working farm in 1905 as her home away from London and her artistic retreat. She left the house to the National Trust upon her death in 1943. The house, farm and nearby villages feature in Potter's books, The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan, The Tale of Tom Kitten, The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck and The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Roly-Poly Pudding. The farm was managed by John Cannon. The wing on the left was built by Potter for Cannon and his family in 1906. The Tale of Jemima…

The house contains three rooms downstairs, the entrance hall, parlour and scullery. There are four rooms upstairs; the sitting room, treasure room, bedroom and new room. All of these rooms can be entered by visitors. There are additional rooms not on the visitor route, including a cellar, a landing cupboard and a washroom, which did not contain plumbing, but was simply a space to wash using a bowl of water.

Called the new room as it was an extension added by Beatrix at the same time as she built the adjoining house. Beatrix referred to it as the library. It contains five large paintings by her brother Walter Bertram Potter. The single window looks out over the village of Near Sawrey, a scene Beatrix drew for The Tale of Samuel Whiskers.