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Hawkshead
Above: HAwkshead
For all those reasons – and of course the beautiful scenery, good pubs and decent shops – Hawkshead is a favourite with tourists. For much of the year the pavements and narrow streets throng with crowds of holiday-makers who delight in the village's obvious charms.
A visit means they can tick off another place with close connections to two of the region's biggest literary names: William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter, both of whom took inspiration from Hawkshead. But although their legacy has shaped much of the tourism industry which is so important to modern day Hawkshead, the village wouldn't look the same were it not for someone the visitors have probably not heard of, Edwin Sandys.
Born in 1519 at Esthwaite Hall, a mile south of Hawkshead, into a family which had held land in the area since the 13th Century, Edwin was educated first at Furness Abbey and then at St John's, Cambridge from where he graduated in 1539. He went on to become a Doctor of Divinity, master of Catherine Hall and vice chancellor of the University but on the death of King Edward VI, after a failed rebellion, Edwin was arrested and taken to the Tower of London. He was later moved to more comfortable conditions in Marshalsea prison where he befriended the prison keeper who helped him escape. He fled to Antwerp and then Augsberg and Strasbourg where his wife joined him.
But she and his infant son died there of a plague and he moved to Zurich until the Elizabeth I came to the throne and it became safe for him to travel back to England.
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