THE curtain is soon to close on Wray Castle's exhibition about two women from its history - Beatrix Potter and Margaret Dawson.

Margaret, daughter of a Liverpool gin merchant, was instrumental in the Gothic-style castle being built.

Meanwhile, the young Beatrix holidayed there as a teenager and celebrated her 16th birthday at the 1840s property. The exhibition charts the storyteller's younger years as a talented scientist, when she researched mycology - the study of fungi - and faced difficulties getting credit for her work.

Visitors to The Women of Wray Castle: Convention and Control can play a giant-sized "silk stockings and social ladders" board game in the drawing room, and listen to clips about life as modern women from members of the Cumbria Girly Book Club.

Open weekends 10am-4pm until the end of November.

‘The Women of Wray Castle: Convention and Control’ exhibition runs at weekends, 10am-4pm, until the end of November.

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