The Armitt in Ambleside celebrates Wainwright and Beatrix Potter

The Armitt Museum and Library in Ambleside is small in scale but rich in stories, and its recent programme showed exactly why it matters to anyone who loves the Lake District.

Throughout 2025 the museum hosted a major exhibition on Alfred Wainwright, marking 70 years since the publication of The Eastern Fells, the first of his Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. It was co-curated with Alfred Wainwright Books and Memorabilia and led by archivist Chris Butterfield.

Visitors could see original artwork, printing negatives, plates and gold blocking used to produce the books, as well as an original manuscript. The exhibition offered a rare look at the painstaking craft behind guides that are still carried up the fells today.

Alongside it ran The Armitt Explores Beatrix Potter's Summers in the Lake District, focusing on her studies of fungi. The Armitt holds more than 300 of her original fungi and microscopic artworks, a reminder that Potter was a serious naturalist as well as a much-loved author.

The institution's own history reaches back almost two centuries. Its roots lie in the Ambleside Book Society, founded in 1828, and the Armitt was established as a library in 1912 following a bequest of books and money from Mary Louisa Armitt, who hoped a museum would one day follow.

After several moves around the town, from a cottage on Kelsick Road to rooms above the public library, the collection gained a purpose-built museum thanks to a successful Heritage Lottery Fund bid in 1997.

The Armitt is also home to one of the country's most important collections of work by Kurt Schwitters. The German artist first visited the Lake District in 1942 and moved to Ambleside in 1945, and around 30 of his pieces are held at the museum.

Together, Wainwright, Potter and Schwitters show the breadth of what the Armitt holds: walkers, writers, scientists and artists who were all shaped by the same landscape. It is the kind of museum where a short visit can easily turn into an afternoon, as one object leads to another story about the people who made Ambleside their home.

The Armitt is a rewarding stop on a rainy day in Ambleside, or a thoughtful addition to a walking holiday. Current exhibitions, talks and opening times are listed on the museum's website.