Letter by Alfred Wainwright
Happy New Year everyone! Our first Object of the Month for 2025 marks our new exhibition opening next month, with a letter by Lakeland legend Alfred Wainwright.
Alfred Wainwright (1907 – 1991) is best known today for his Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells, a series of seven books on 214 of the Lake District fells. Each book was handwritten and drawn in Wainwright’s distinctive style, and inspired fell walkers around the world to explore every peak in the Lakes. Today, millions of people every year walk across Cumbria trying to bag every Wainwright.
Wainwright was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, and his childhood was reportedly difficult and impoverished. His alcoholic father often struggled to find work as a stonemason, so his mother helped make ends meet as a laundress. Nonetheless, Wainwright excelled at school and his first job at 13 was as an ‘office boy’ in the Engineering Department of Blackburn Borough Council. Taking classes at night school allowed him to become an accountant and work his up the ladder in the local council.
In 1930, Wainwright first visited the Lake District aged 23. He and his cousin took the train from Blackburn to Windermere, and the first fell they climbed was Orrest Head. According to Wainwright, this walk “cast a spell that changed my life…
I had seen landscapes of rural beauty pictured in the local art gallery, but here was no painted canvas; this was real. This was truth. God was in his heaven that day and I a humble worshipper.”
Eleven years later, Wainwright moved to Kendal to work in the Borough Treasurer’s Office, a post he held until he retired in 1967. He spent his spare time exploring the Cumbrian fells on foot, falling in love with the landscape. In November 1952, he began creating his Pictorial Guides, and his literary career spanned four decades until his death in 1991 aged 84.
This letter was written in the late 1980s, addressed to the author Hunter Davies. Wainwright sent it along with some artwork for the third edition of Davies’s The Good Guide to the Lake District. He writes:
Dear Mr Davies
It’s a pleasure. But why a London address when Lakeland is at its enchanting best?
Sincerely,
A Wainwright
Our exhibition opens on Wednesday 12th February – visit us to learn more about Alfred Wainwright and his Lakeland legacy.
Sources:
• The Armitt Collection
• Ex-Fellwanderer by Alfred Wainwright (1987)
• Alfred Wainwright Books & Memorabilia:
• The Wainwright Society:
• The Lake District