Beatrix Potter bought a farm that soon filled with livestock and poultry

Beatrix Potter used the success of The Tale of Peter Rabbit to buy Hill Top, a 17th-century farmhouse and 34-acre farm in the Lake District village of Near Sawrey, in 1905. Potter was 39 and had already published six books with Frederick Warne & Co when she bought the property with proceeds from Peter Rabbit and a small inheritance from an aunt. Although she could not live there permanently at first because she was expected to spend much of the year with her parents in London, Hill Top quickly became both a working farm and a source of inspiration for her writing. She hired a property manager and began learning about Lakeland farming, eventually developing a particular commitment to Herdwick sheep. Over the following decades, her interests shifted increasingly from writing towards farming, land management and conservation, and by the time of her death in 1943, she had built up a substantial estate that she left to the National Trust.The farm gave Beatrix Potter a new kind of independenceHill Top represented something very different from Potter's life in London. She had spent many summers in the Lake District from childhood and regarded the countryside as a place where she could...