Sophia Armitt’s Fungi Sketchbook
It’s mushroom season, but we’re not talking about Beatrix Potter this time – our Object of the Month is this 1906 fungi sketchbook and painting owned by Sophia Armitt.
Sophia was the oldest Armitt sister, born in 1847. Her father, William Armitt, was an overseer for the city of Salford, and he believed his children deserved a first-class education – this was unusual in the mid-nineteenth century, especially for a father of daughters. Together with her younger sisters, Annie Maria and Mary Louisa (known as Louie to her family), Armitt attended Islington House Academy in Salford, and her specialist subjects were botany and art. She later studied at the Manchester School of Art.
In 1867, William Armitt died suddenly, and the three sisters faced financial uncertainty. They opened a school in Eccles, Lancashire, to support themselves and their mother Mary Ann. Sophia was headmistress, and by all accounts the school was successful and served the local community well. Sophia, Annie and Louie continued to study, attend lectures, and travel in their spare time.
In 1877, the middle sister Annie married Dr Stanford Harris, and the couple moved near Hawkshead. Their mother died in 1879, followed by their Uncle Thomas in 1880, leaving the three sisters a collective legacy that allowed them financial independence. Sophia and Louie sold the Eccles school and moved to Oxford in 1882 so Louie could achieve her dream to become a Reader at the Bodleian Library – she was one of the first women to do so.
Four years later, Sophia and Louie followed Annie to Hawkshead, and the three sisters remained in the Lake District for the rest of their lives. They become good friends with John Ruskin, Charlotte Mason, the Rawnsley brothers, the Arnold family, among many others. They were part of the Lakeland intellectual community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, although they are not as well remembered as their contemporaries today.
This sketchbook includes many watercolours of fungi Sophia studied in the local area. Like Beatrix Potter, she was fascinated by botany and mushrooms. These pages show Clitocybe salvia and maxima (aka giant clitcybe), found near Rydal Woods in 1906. We also have this painting of brick tuft mushrooms (Hypholoma lateritium) found ‘on a rotten stump’ near Rydal on 24th October 1906.
Sophia died in 1908, leaving her book collection to her youngest sister. When Mary Louisa Armitt died three years later, she left a bequest that her and Sophia’s book collection must be combined with John Ruskin’s library and the Ambleside Book Society’s collection, to create the first subscription library in Ambleside – The Armitt!
We are named after Louie, but the museum and library would not exist without Sophia and Annie’s input. When the library opened in 1912, Annie was on the first board of trustees, and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley composed a sonnet for the opening of the library as a tribute to Sophia and Louie:
As in some inland solitude a shell
Still gently whispers of its home, the deep,
So from the world of being beyond all sleep
Where those two happy sister spirits dwell…
October at The Armitt is all about fungi – don’t miss our Fungi Walk around Ambleside on Sunday 6th October, or Fungi Fest all day at the museum on Saturday 26th October. Book tickets online here: https://armitt-library-and-museum-centre.arttickets.org.uk/
Sources:
- The Armitt Collection
- The Armitts: Sophia and Her Sisters by Barbara Crossley
- The Armitt Story by Eileen Jay
- Hypholoma lateritium, First Nature
- Sophia Armitt, Herbaria United