"LAKE DISTRICT. Self-catering accommodation in writer's farmhouse, Duddon Valley." It is impossible to know how many readers of the Guardian, and other publications, responded to this small ad over the years, but those who did found it led them to a remote Lakeland cottage called Browside and to my father, Peter Moorhouse, who has died age 86. What greeted them was a frugal, whitewashed house whose only mod cons were running water and electricity. What it lacked in convenience, Browside made up for in the majesty of its setting – stunning views of Harter Fell and, in the distance, the Scafell range – and the qualities of its host.
Peter was born in Southport, Merseyside, the first of three children of a Liverpool eye surgeon, and attended a collection of small private schools. He went to Liverpool University but did not graduate, and then had a variety of jobs. These included training to be a land surveyor and working at the government's Building Research Establishment in Watford, Hertfordshire. He eventually started his own company as an electrical engineer.
Peter had fallen in love with the Lake District as a child, when he had come with his parents from Southport to holiday in the area, and lived at Browside for 47 years. His deep love of the fells, the simplicity of his lifestyle, the breadth of his erudition and the warmth of his welcome persuaded many visitors to return time and again.
It is commonplace now to scorn the excesses of consumerism, but Peter did more than most to demonstrate how it is possible to live in accordance with green principles. He baked his own bread, brewed his own beer, bottled his own fruit and, to the extent that the rocky Cumbrian terrain and appetite of marauding Herdwick and Swaledale sheep permitted, grew his own vegetables. It was not a completely self-sufficient existence, but about as close to it as circumstances would allow. He was a loyal supporter of causes such as CND, Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment, Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.
He was a remarkably tolerant man, a free thinker with a love of ideas who liked nothing more than stimulating discussions late into the Cumbrian night. Peter's claim to be a writer was strictly speaking correct: he worked for large periods of his life on an autobiographical novel, which however at the time of his death remained unfinished.
He is survived by his second wife, Nilda, whom he married in 2002; and, from his first marriage, to Beryl, three daughters, Susan, Mary and Ruth, me, and 10 grandchildren.