‘Everything was romantic in my imagination,’ wrote Beatrix Potter. The enchanting world of Peter Rabbit grew out of that romantic imagination. But it also travelled far beyond the pages of those children’s storybooks to endure as potent inspiration for the spaces we dream of living in as adults. Who doesn’t remember poring over the burrow where Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail drank camomile tea and ate blackberries? It was the cosiest a home could possibly look and the stuff of fantasies for every child who longed to make a den in the garden and live in it.
Many of us are still hung up on that notion today, which is perhaps why it even has a legitimate name in the interiors world. It’s known as cottagecore, or lately as its cosier, Potter-esque cousin: burrowcore. As an aesthetic, it revolves around an affection for worn wooden furniture, low ceilings, flourishing kitchen gardens, Cotswolds stone and roaring fires. It speaks to a desire to return to a simplicity that we often associate with childhood. It also seems synonymous with Potter’s charming stories and illustrations. But do they bear any resemblance to how Potter herself actually lived? As we mark the 165th anniversary of the iconic author’s birth this July, we are asking: is Beatrix Potter the original queen of burrowcore?
Born in 1866, Potter grew up in an environment that was quite different to where she would end up. Her parents were from a well-to-do upper middle class set with the obligatory South Kensington townhouse. For holidays, they would take to the Lake District and the countrysides of Scotland and north Wales. It is on these trips that the images of a rural idyll would begin to inspire a young Beatrix.
©National Trust Images/James Dobson©National Trust Images/James Do
‘Her family would take a house for a few months of the year, and she would sketch the working parts of the gardens,’ says Katy Canales, property curator at the National Trust. ‘So, the timber frames for where the vegetables were growing, or the walls on which the fruit trees are planted against. Those were the parts that fascinated her, and then you see those jump from her sketchbooks into her stories.’
The world of Peter Rabbit is set against the backdrop of cabbage patches, foxgloves, red soil, greener-than-green grass and overflowing potting sheds. When The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published in 1902, it became an immediate success. A large part of their immense popularity was put down to Potter’s spirited illustrations and depictions of the countryside. The money she earned allowed her to move to the Lake District in 1905 after her fiancé, Norman, tragically died, to Hill Top – a 17th century cottage and farm. She was ridiculed for paying too much for it, but she embraced the life that her surroundings and her new home seemed to offer. You can see this even in the way she decorated. ‘She diverts from what is popular,’ says Katy of Potter’s taste.
The National Trust is currently on a decade-long project to restore Potter’s decorative choices at Hill Top. She grew up surrounded by opulent interiors where, as Katy puts it, ‘more is more’: plush fabrics, elaborate trims and frills. Hill Top represented an almost complete rejection of this. Rather than imposing metropolitan tastes on a country house, she immersed herself in the local vernacular. Instead of buying fashionable furniture, Potter deliberately sought out pieces that many of her contemporaries considered old-fashioned. She attended local auctions, filling Hill Top with hand-carved oak furniture and examples of regional craftsmanship alongside family heirlooms.
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