I can’t imagine anyone who reads The Start of Something Wonderful being left in any doubt as to how much I love the Lake District. A stunning part of the UK, I’ve holidayed there since childhood. My memories are mainly of lakeside picnics and splashing in the water. By my late teens, it was the scenery that drew me in. The lakes and fells are captivating and the towns and villages picturesque.
Two years ago, I was on holiday in the Lakes with my family and felt compelled to add lakes and mountains to my settings repertoire. My editor approved this and I started brewing ideas. I imagined a crumbling farm that needed repurposing and had the start of an origins story.
When we returned to Keswick over Easter last year, we walked round the west side of Derwent Water – a direction we’d never previously taken. This took us across fields, alongside the Rivers Greta and Derwent, through the pretty village of Portinscale, and to a place called The Lingholm Estate where a board outside advertised a café. Intricate wrought iron gates in a dry stone wall welcomed us onto a pretty curved pathway through woodland. As we couldn’t see the café from the entrance, it felt like an adventure awaited us.
The pathway opened out and to a field of Herdwick sheep, a beautiful walled garden and a stunning manor house. Wooden Beatrix Potter figures gave a hint of something magical and it turned out that Potter used to holiday in The Lingholm Estate with her family when she was in her twenties.
Looking around, my imagination was fizzing. What if the crumbling farm was actually a crumbling manor house which needed commercially developing to survive? What if the result of the work was something like this beautiful estate I was looking at now? I couldn’t stop thinking about The Lingholm Estate long after we’d gone home. My original plan was for book 1 to be about Rosie who manages the successful riding stables on the estate. I had a stack of other ideas including a future plan for an artist in residence but, after a conversation with my editor about the best way to start the series, we decided to lead with the artist story as she’d be new to the area and we could showcase the beauty of the Lakes through her eyes.
In The Start of Something Wonderful, Rosie’s best friend Autumn is an illustrator who has lost her creative sparkle. She stays with Rosie, hoping that walking in Beatrix Potter’s shoes will reignite her imagination.
What a joy it has been to re-imagine this estate and nearby Portinscale into my own fictional version – Willowdale and Willowdale Hall. My version of the hall and village are geographically closer together and, although they are not the real places – just inspired by them – I hope readers will visit the area and recognise certain aspects, just like they do with Whitsborough Bay and Hedgehog Hollow.
Big hugs
Jessica xx
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