ABSTRACT

In 1810, the poet William Wordsworth concluded his Guide to the Lakes with his now widely cited wish that the English Lake District should be deemed ‘a sort of national property in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy’ (Wordsworth 1810: 92). In so doing, he was, arguably, one of the first to propose the concept of national parks (see Chapter 2), yet it was to be a century and a half (and some seventy years after the creation of the world’s first national park) before his dream was realized. While numerous national parks were designated elsewhere in the world, it was only in the 1950s that, along with nine other areas in England and Wales, the Lake District achieved similar status, by which time it was firmly established both nationally and internationally as a tourist destination. Indeed, it is ironic that Wordsworth was, and continues to be, a major influence in the emergence and popularity of the Lake District as a destination. Although his principal concern was with the protection of the area (particularly from a tourist ‘invasion’ facilitated by the construction of the railways), his poetry contributed significantly to both the creation of an enduring place-myth and the related rise of the Lake District as a tourist ‘playground’ from the early nineteenth century onwards (O’Neill and Walton 2004: 22).