Bridge House in Ambleside
Bridge House is the most photographed and best known building in Ambleside.
This tiny stone built house, built on a bridge over Stock Beck is now owed by the National Trust who use it as an information centre.
It was first used as an apple store; it seems that building the house over the stream helped preserve the apples, and may also have had the added benefit of avoiding land tax!*
Built during the 17th century in the grounds of Ambleside Hall, the area around this unusual house has changed, the woodlands and apple orchard have gone, and the house is now next to a busy road.
Ambleside Hall has been demolished, and ironically without this small building built in its grounds many people would not know it existed.
* A quick Google search for “Bridge House in Ambleside” returns nearly sixty thousand results, and often the information is conflicting. The house does seem elaborate just for a place to store apples, maybe it was a summer house or a folly, and perhaps a man that repaired chairs lived in the house with his wife and six children.
Whatever the history of this one up and one down building is, I doubt that many visitors to Ambleside pass by without taking a second look.
