Beatrix Heelis and her Herdwicks (AW74)

In later life, established in her beloved Lake District, practical tweeds and woollens replaced the fashionable silks and velvets of Beatrix Potter’s prim and proper family home in South Kensington.
She stayed there looking after her parents until she was over 40, all the while writing and illustrating her famous stories and escaping intermittently to Hill Top, the farm purchased with her book royalties.
Marriage to local solicitor William Heelis freed Beatrix to realise her dream of full-time farm life. She bred prize-winning Herdwick sheep and acquired property with a view to preserving the landscape and way of life she loved. At their death Beatrix and William Heelis left over 4,000 acres to the National Trust.