Tudor House

Although we were in Penrith today for other reasons, we spent a little time as tourists and actually went into the Museum, a place I have only been in once and that was a long while ago. The museum has some interesting things, but could do with a bit of organisation.

However, the two guys at the Visitor Information desk were brilliant. They told us so much about aspects of the town that we had little idea of. This, together with the purchase of a few books and leaflets, has given me some great leads for a research project I intend following when we get back from America. Amazing what you can find out about a place you think you know well.
 
For today I decided to blip this house, which is just by the church. This is Robert Bartram's House and, with its projecting gable, is a legacy of the earliest domestic architecture in Penrith. An inscription gives the date 1563 and the initials RB, confirming that Robert Bartram was the first owner of the building.
 
In the 1770s it became Dame Birkett's School run by an elderly lady in what was apparently a rather eccentric manner. When William Wordsworth was living with his grandparents in Penrith, he and his sister Dorothy attended the school, along with their friends the Hutchinsons, one of whom, Mary, was to be William's future wife. This was around 1776, before William was sent to school in Hawkshead in 1779 when we was nine years old.
 
More recently the building became the Tudor Café and then just a year or so ago it opened as The Gathering, a community coffee shop.