On Wednesday 20 April Mrs Pam Wright gave an informed talk on the life of Beatrix
Potter. She was born in London in 1866 and spent a rather lonely childhood in a wellto-
do family, but she had a love of nature and drawing/painting as a child and also
accumulated a menagerie of animals which travelled with the family on holidays to the
Lake District. Her first book developed from an illustrated letter to a sick child and
she went on to write twenty three books in total. Her first property in the Lake District
was Hilltop Farm but she eventually owned fifteen farms and Hilltop became a
museum. The Revd Rawnsley was a family friend and one of the co-founders of the
National Trust and all her property was left to the Trust upon her death at 77.