Grasmere: The Economic Benefits of Tourism
As tourism increased, so too did its economic benefits — both for locals and for those who settled in the area.
Not only did hotel owners and workers gain, but private home owners also took in boarders. Sylvan’s Pictorial Handbook, 1847, points out Grasmere for the discerning tourist: “It is a quiet little spot, and much preferred by those who do not like the bustle of inns... Here, as at Ambleside, private lodgings are to be had. There are, however, two good inns, the Red Lion, near the church, and the Swan, in either of which the tourist can be comfortably housed’.
Harriet Martineau, in the third edition of her guide, 1866, writes of a local man at Easedale Tarn who catered for the tourists: “an old guide, who has built himself a little hut, and spends the summer days up here. He has a boat upon the tarn, and offers to row the stranger about; or finds him towels if he is disposed to bathe”.
At nearby Rydal, in 1831, a gentleman traveller called Isaac Simpson wrote in his journal of an encounter with an old lady who showed visitors the Rydal waterfalls and so raised “a little money”. Simpson's trip to the Lakes combined holiday and business, as he was aslo interested in examining Kendal cottons.
On the other hand, the locals were not always alive to their own financial opportunities, or simply too decent to take advantage of them. Joseph Budworth in his guide of 1792 writes of the feast he had at the Red Lion, which included roast pike, a boiled fowl, veal cutlets and much more: “the dinner was so cheap I must mention what it consisted of... For two people, at ten pence a head”. He also wrote that at Grasmere “Our guide left us, and it was with diffidence he accepted a trifle”.
Harry Goodwin, Easedale Tarn, 1896, watercolour, The Wordsworth Trust.