Allan Bank is a grade II listed two-storey villa standing on high ground slightly to the west of Grasmere village in the heart of the Lake District.

Allan Bank is designed in a "bleakly Italianate" style according to Pevsner,[3] faced with scored stucco and roofed with slate; it has been described as "large, though not handsome".

In a letter to Richard Sharp he called it a "temple of abomination", and told him that "the house will stare you in the face from every part of the Vale [of Grasmere] and entirely destroy its character of simplicity and seclusion".

[15][16] Dorothy immediately began to regret the impending loss of their wonderful views of Grasmere and Easedale, and declared the place "sweeter than paradise itself".

[17] After a further year had passed, and without the planned improvements to the parsonage having been made, they moved in June 1811, leaving Allan Bank to their landlord Mr.

[18] During the Allan Bank years Wordsworth had written The Convention of Cintra, the first version of the Guide to the Lakes and most of The Excursion, and revised The White Doe of Rylstone, while Coleridge produced his journal The Friend.

[21] The educator and historian Thomas Arnold and his family spent the summer of 1833 there while their new house at nearby Fox How was being built;[22] he worked on part of his History of Rome there, and boasted to a friend of the inspiring quality of the view from his window as he wrote.