Grasmere Gingerbread

Sarah Nelson, a Victorian cook, began selling gingerbread from a rock outside her cottage in Grasmere in 1854, and the business has continued on the same site ever since, in a building that was the village school from 1660 and where Wordsworth taught for a time. The product is not a biscuit or a cake but something between the two, chewy and crumbly at once, heavily spiced, and the recipe has never been published; it is kept in a bank vault in Ambleside and is known to a small number of people. The shop is tiny, about the size of a bedroom, staffed by women in Victorian aprons and frilled caps, and the queue routinely runs out of the door and along the churchyard wall. It is sold in paper-wrapped packs of six or twelve.

What you actually see

• The 1854 recipe - unpublished and kept in a bank vault.
• The former school - a building from 1660 where Wordsworth once taught.
• The tiny shop - a single room with a queue that reaches the churchyard.
• The texture - between biscuit and cake, chewy and heavily spiced.

When to go

Year-round; the shop opens daily and bakes through the morning. Early is better, since the queue builds from mid-morning in season and stock has run out on the busiest summer days.

Honest expectations

The queue is the main cost of the visit and can take twenty minutes in summer. The shop takes only a few people at a time. It is expensive for what it is, and the strong ginger is not to everyone's taste.

Nearby

Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth graves are in the same village; Rydal lies south.