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Near Sawrey is a small village on the western side of Esthwaite Water, in the southern Lake District between Hawkshead and the Windermere ferry at Far Sawrey. It has a post office, a pub, a handful of houses and farms, and Beatrix Potter's Hill Top farmhouse at one end of the main lane.
It is one of the most visited small villages in Cumbria.
The visitors come almost entirely for Hill Top — and they come in such numbers that the car park at the National Trust property fills before 10am on summer weekends, and the lane through the village is frequently impassable by afternoon. This is not the village's fault. It is the consequence of being the home farm of one of the most beloved children's authors in history, in a landscape that is directly reproduced in those books.
Near Sawrey appears most directly in The Pie and the Patty-Pan (1905) — the book set in a village called Sawrey, which is Near Sawrey with minimal disguise. The houses, the pump in the yard, the garden walls, the lanes are all recognisable. Potter dedicated the book "to all those who live in the friendly village of Sawrey near Esthwaite Water".
The village also appears in The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck — the farmyard and the lane below Hill Top — and in The Tale of Tom Kitten, where the kittens' mother sends them out in their best clothes and they immediately lose them. The hill behind the farmhouse and the views from the garden appear in several other books.
Walking through Near Sawrey with the relevant books in hand is one of the most satisfying literary pilgrimage experiences available in the Lake District — the correspondence between the illustration and the real place is consistent and specific.
The farmhouse at Hill Top is preserved by the National Trust in a state as close as possible to its appearance during Potter's occupancy. The furniture is largely original. Her sketching materials, her china, her personal possessions are arranged as she left them. The rooms are small — the farmhouse was always a farmhouse, not a grand literary residence — and the sense of inhabited, worked-in domesticity is part of what makes it different from most writer's houses.
The garden — the garden that appears in The Tale of Tom Kitten and that Potter designed and tended with real seriousness — is maintained in the cottage garden tradition she established. The front path, the gate, the hollyhocks and the terraced beds are recognisable from the illustrations.
Admission is timed and limited; in summer the tickets sometimes sell out. Booking in advance via the National Trust website is strongly recommended.
May and June for the garden at its botanical best — the spring planting at its most vigorous, the roses on the walls, the walled garden producing the first flowers.
September and October for lower visitor numbers and the autumn light on the surrounding fell and woodland. Esthwaite Water in October mist, visible from the lane above the village, is one of the finest views in the southern Lakes.
Any weekday, at any time of year, over a summer Saturday.
The Tower Bank Arms in Near Sawrey is the pub that appears in The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck — the building is in the background of the illustration where Jemima passes the gate. It is still a functioning pub and a decent lunch stop on any Beatrix Potter visit. The connection to the illustration is subtle enough to be satisfying rather than overtly commercialised.
The Windermere Ferry from Bowness crosses to the Far Sawrey shore and connects to a minor road to Near Sawrey and Hawkshead — one of the most pleasant approaches to the village and one that most visitors, arriving by car from Windermere or Ambleside, miss entirely. The ferry runs approximately every 20 minutes in season; the walk from the ferry landing to Hill Top is about 20 minutes through woodland and farmland.
On our Beatrix Potter tours, we approach Near Sawrey via the western shore road, which gives the most beautiful approach and avoids the congested A592.
Near Sawrey and Hill Top are the centrepiece of the Beatrix Potter Hidden Country morning tour. Entry to Hill Top included in the tour price.
Part of our complete guide to Beatrix Potter in the Lake District.