The Wordsworth Trust has been awarded £242,355 as part of the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund to help cultural and creative organisations face the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic.

The organisation cares for Dove Cottage in Grasmere and the unique manuscript archive that is kept there.

Through its activities in schools, care homes and community settings across Cumbria and beyond, it also fulfils Wordsworth’s own wish for his poetry to ‘live and do good’.

The Wordsworth Trust is currently completing a major transformation of its site, Wordsworth Grasmere.

Director of the Wordsworth Trust, Michael McGregor, said:“We are hugely grateful to the Government and to Arts Council England for this grant.

"It is tremendous news, and it is also testament to William Wordsworth’s lasting importance to the cultural life of the country in this, his 250th anniversary year.

"This investment will sustain us through the challenges ahead, and enable us to emerge from the pandemic with confidence.

"We have been delighted with visitors’ responses to the new presentation of Dove Cottage since it opened in August. We now look forward to completing our transformational Reimagining Wordsworth project, and to being fully open as Wordsworth Grasmere next spring.”