One Michelin Key · Grasmere
Things to do near Forest Side —
a local guide
A Gothic mansion of 1853, in forty-three acres above Grasmere.
One Michelin Key · Grasmere
A Gothic mansion of 1853, in forty-three acres above Grasmere.
Michelin
Key and Starand a Green Star
The house
1853Victorian Gothic
Grounds
43 acresabove Grasmere
Dove Cottage
1 miledown the road
Private tour
£459per group, from the hotel
Nearest pickup
Amblesidelibrary
A private tour from Forest Side
Book any of our tours as a private tour, collected from the hotel, for your party alone — or have a bespoke tour planned around your stay.
Book a private tour Plan a bespoke tourPrivate from £459 per group · small-group tours from £79 per person
You come up the drive through trees and the noise of the road simply stops. Forest Side was built in 1853 for Stephen Heelis, a Manchester solicitor who wanted a Gothic mansion somewhere he could breathe — and after a long quiet period it has been thoroughly brought back. Today it stands in forty-three acres of woodland and garden on the Keswick road just outside Grasmere, the fell rising dark and close behind it, with a Victorian walled kitchen garden that genuinely supplies the kitchen. This guide covers the estate, the village below, and the days out beyond the valley. If you would like the whole story of the house first — the farm, the poem, the forty-seven workmen and the seventy years it spent as everybody's house — there is a full history of Forest Side.
Forest Side holds a Michelin Star, a Michelin Green Star and a Michelin Key — the only property in Cumbria holding all three. How to plan a day around a table here, and see the Michelin Collection for the full picture across the county.
It was a farm before it was a mansion, and before that a smithy and an ostler's house — the ring of the anvil, the steam coming off the coach horses at the Swan. In 1853 a Manchester solicitor called Stephen Heelis bought the farm and built this, and kept it for just five years before his wife died and he sold up and went home. Five summers of that view, for all of it. It is worth thinking about on the terrace with a drink in your hand.
What is odd and rather lovely is that Wordsworth had already written this hillside into a poem — a shepherd on the forest side who loses his ground to a stranger's hand — half a century before the stranger came up the drive.
Heelis also walled the kitchen garden, which is the reason for everything below. The full history of the house takes about eight minutes and is worth reading before dinner.
Plenty of hotels mention a kitchen garden. This one grows well over a hundred varieties of vegetable and herb, chemical-free, and the kitchen is built around whatever comes out of it — the rest found within about ten miles, or foraged in the woods behind.
Walk it before dinner rather than after. Go in the hour when the light comes in low over the wall, brush a hand through the herb beds and take the smell of it in with you, and you will sit down recognising things — that leaf, those flowers, the earth still fresh on them. Very little on the plate has travelled further than a couple of hundred yards, and it is a short walk that changes the whole meal.
That absence of chemicals is also why the woodland behind still holds red squirrels and roe deer. Stand still at the edge of the trees early enough and you will hear them before you see them.
The village is close enough to walk and small enough to know completely in an evening. St Oswald's, with the Wordsworth graves under the yews and the river running along the churchyard wall. The gingerbread shop in the old village school beside the gate, which you will smell several yards before you reach the door — warm, dark, faintly peppery — and where the queue is half the pleasure. Dove Cottage a short stroll further on.
Go early or late. The middle of the day belongs to the coaches, but by five they have gone and the village hands itself back: slate walls holding the last of the warmth, woodsmoke starting somewhere, and the fells going green to blue to nothing at all while you walk back up the drive.
The circuit from Grasmere round to Rydal Water and back is about four miles with no serious climbing, and it starts, effectively, at the end of the drive. Two lakes, a cave you can stand inside and hear your own voice come back at you, and the ground below Wordsworth's later home at Rydal.
Do it in the morning, before the day has decided what it is going to be. There is a stretch where the path runs level above the water with the whole valley open below you and nobody else about, and that is the bit people remember. Allow two and a half hours and be back for lunch.
Grasmere is small, which is its charm and its limit. Most of our small-group tours carry seven guests at most and pick up at Ambleside library, ten minutes down the valley — Windermere station and Bowness Pier 1 are the other two. The Brontë and All Creatures days are the exceptions and run from Windermere or Oxenholme. Private tours collect from the hotel.
Worth knowing before you choose: any of these tours can also run privately, collected from the hotel — the same tour, for your party alone. Just say so when you enquire.
Our small-group tours carry seven guests at most. Any of them can also run privately, collected from the hotel, for your party alone.
This is a bespoke day, tailor-made for your booking and collected from the hotel — full bespoke days from £942 for the group, up to seven of you, with well-behaved dogs welcome by arrangement.
Autumn is when the kitchen garden shows its full range. Walk it in the low afternoon light and the smell alone tells the story — damp earth, the sweetness of the last squashes, herbs releasing their scent as you brush past — with roots coming in alongside the season's foraging, and the menu shifting to match almost week by week. The woodland behind turns properly through October, a canopy of deep amber and rust overhead, and it is the best time of year to spot the red squirrels, noticeably busier and bolder now as they dart between branches caching for winter.
The Grasmere-to-Rydal circuit is at its finest now too: the same easy four miles, but with both lakes doubling a full, blazing range of autumn colour on their still surfaces, and St Oswald's churchyard deep in fallen leaves around the Wordsworth graves, the yews darkening overhead. There's a particular hush to that churchyard in October — go before the frost strips the trees bare, while the light is still gold and low enough to catch every leaf on its way down.
For what's open, what's turning and the tours that suit the season, see our guide to the Lake District in autumn.
For a stay built around the dining room and the garden, a private tour is the easy fit. We collect you from the hotel, and the day is for your party alone — no meeting point, no waiting about, nobody else in the next seat. We have you back in good time to bathe and change with the light still on the lawn. Forest Side welcomes dogs, and so do we on private tours, where they travel safely in our vehicle crates.
Grasmere sits at the foot of Dunmail Raise, and the roads north and west of the village are the ones that show the Lakes at their wildest — the western shore of Thirlmere under Helvellyn, the Easedale lanes, Honister beyond Borrowdale if the day runs that way. Our private tours are shaped for this reason: the terrain and the weather here, a single-track road in a Cumbrian winter, and a long day taken in comfort. The pace and the route are yours.
Not sure which route suits your plans, or want a day built entirely from scratch — a family reunion, a wedding anniversary, scattering ashes somewhere that mattered? Tell us what you have in mind and we'll design a day around it — see our guide to celebrating a special occasion for ideas, or get in touch directly.
Without a car: the village needs none; the 555 bus runs the A591 corridor, and tour days cover the rest.
Timing: book tour days when you book the room, particularly in daffodil season.
Ages: our tours suit adults and older children, about seven and up.
On the Keswick road just outside Grasmere village, a Victorian Gothic mansion in 43 acres of woodland and gardens.
Ambleside library, about ten minutes down the valley — Windermere station and Bowness Pier 1 are the other two. On private tours we can usually collect you at the hotel.
Yes, it welcomes dogs. Well-behaved dogs are also welcome on our private tours, travelling safely in the crates our vehicles carry, though not on scheduled departures.
Stephen Heelis, a Manchester solicitor born in Bolton in 1801, built the house in 1853 on the site of an earlier farm. He sold it after only five years. From 1929 until late in the twentieth century it was a walking-holiday centre before becoming a hotel.
On private tours, yes — we collect you from the hotel and bring you back, from £459 for the group, up to seven. Scheduled tours pick up at Ambleside library, about ten minutes down the valley, except the Brontë and All Creatures days, which run from Windermere or Oxenholme.
The Victorian walled garden grows well over a hundred varieties of vegetables and herbs without chemicals, supplying the restaurant directly and supporting red squirrels and roe deer in the surrounding woodland.
Any of our tours, run privately: your own guide and minibus, collected from the hotel, on the date that suits you, with nobody in the minibus you didn't bring.
With six or seven of you, a private tour costs less per person than the scheduled tour.
Book a private tourTailor-made for each individual booking — the places and the people you most want to see.
Plan a bespoke tourLake District Tours is an independent local tour company based in Kendal. This guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by Forest Side.
This page was checked by Phil in .
