Izaak Walton - Shallowford and The Izaak Walton Cottage

Shallowford and The Izaak Walton Cottage

It is characteristic of his kindly nature that he left his property at Shallowford in mid Staffordshire for the benefit of the poor of his native town. Walton had purchased Halfhead Farm there in May 1655. In doing this he was part of a more general retreat of Royalist gentlemen into the English countryside, in the aftermath of the English Civil War, a move summed up by his friend Charles Cotton's well-known poem "The Retirement" (first published in the 5th Edition of Walton Compleat Angler). The cost of Shallowford was £350 and the property included a farmhouse, a cottage, courtyard, garden and nine fields along which a river ran. Part of its attraction may have been that the River Meece, which he mentions in one of his poems, formed part of the boundary. The farm was let to tenants, and Walton kept the excellent fishing. In 1837 the Grand Junction Railway was built across the land to the west cutting the buildings off from part of the river. The farm and the cottage continued to be tenanted, until 1920 when the property was offered for sale, but in a derelict state. Local Stafford businessmen formed The Izaak Walton Cottage Trust to establish a small museum dedicated to the famous writer. They raised £50 to purchase the site and another £500 needed to repair the dilapidated thatched cottage building. Lord Stafford performed the opening ceremony on 30 April 1924. In 1927 sparks from the steam trains caused a fire that destroyed the thatched roof, and the museum was closed for a year. Unfortunately another fire occurred in 1938, and following further restoration, in 1939 the cottage re-opened, this time with a tiled roof. The Trust wound up in 1965, and the building was taken over by Stafford Borough Council. During the 1990s the thatched roof was restored. The ground floor of the museum is set-out in period and has a series of illustrated information boards covering Walton's life, his writings and the story of the Izaak Walton Cottage. Upstairs may be found a collection of fishing related items, the earliest dating from the mid-eighteenth century, while a room has been dedicated to his Lives and to The Compleat Angler. The Izaak Walton Cottage is open to the public on Sunday afternoons during the high summer months, and the gardens are essentially now restored.