Literary Accommodation - Stay/Visit an author's home

[pete9012S]

How many houses can you stay/visit in that have a literary connection?
If you can, provide a link to the website etc..

Alistair Maclean - TORGUISH HOUSE
https://www.visitinvernesslochness.com/ ... uish-house

(Sadly, I think this house has recently been sold.)

Can you think of others??

Hammond Innes - Ayres End Studio
https://www.ruralretreats.co.uk/england ... udio_su123

More info about his house - I would love to visit!
https://www.countrylife.co.uk/property/ ... ote-218302

[pete9012S]

Agatha Christie - Greenway
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/holida ... -apartment



I would just love to stay in one of the Greenway holiday lets.

[pete9012S]

Here's a list of 35 you can visit.
I'm going to look through the list to see:

1. The top three author's houses I would like to visit.
2.The three actual house themselves I like the best.

35 HISTORIC WRITERS’ HOUSES YOU CAN VISIT IN ENGLAND
From the humble lodgings of an impoverished writer yet to make their fortune, to the grand stately mansions of the successful writer, a writer’s home can tell us a lot about the person behind the words: how they lived, what their passions were, what were the personal stories that produced such incredible literature? Here we list over 30 famous writer’s houses throughout England, all of which are open to visitors.

https://www.slow-travel.uk/post/histori ... in-england

[Anita Bensoussane]

Interesting topic, Pete. I love literary houses and have visited quite a few, though I haven't stayed at any overnight.

I'll have to have a think about the three houses I'd most like to visit, and the three I like best as buildings.

In the meantime, these are the ones from the list that I've visited already:

Charles Dickens' house, Doughty Street, London

Shakespeare's Birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire (and other properties in/near Stratford-upon-Avon which have a connection to Shakespeare)

Beatrix Potter's farmhouse (Hill Top), Lake District

Dr Samuel Johnson's house, Gough Square, London

Charles Darwin's house (Down House), Downe, Kent

John Keats' house (Keats House), Hampstead, London

D. H. Lawrence's birthplace, Breach House/The Birthplace Museum, Eastwood, Nottinghamshire (and other properties in Eastwood which have a connection to D. H. Lawrence)

Lord Byron's home, Newstead Abbey, Ravenshead, Nottinghamshire

Henry James' home (also the home of E. F. Benson and Rumer Godden), Lamb House, Rye, Sussex. Sadly, I didn't get to go inside as I happened to be in Rye on a day when the house wasn't open.

Literary houses I've visited that are not on the list:

Enid Blyton's home, Old Thatch, Well End, Buckinghamshire (I've also visited the site of Green Hedges in Beaconsfield, and seen Elfin Cottage and other houses Enid lived in in Beckenham, Kent, mostly from the outside. Oh, and I've seen Southernhay in Hook, Surrey - again from the outside). It was brilliant to see other forumites at these places.

Jane Austen residences, Bath, Somerset - mostly from the outside. I went to the Jane Austen Centre at 40, Gay Street, though Jane Austen actually lived at number 25.

All the houses I've been to were well worth a visit but I was particularly wowed by Eastwood, as D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers is one of my favourite books. I loved the splendour of Lord Byron's Newstead Abbey too, and it felt very special to be at Old Thatch after having been an Enid Blyton fan for as long as I can remember.

[Boodi 2]

Very interesting Pete and Anita!

To the best of my knowledge, the only literary house I have visited is a tower house (Thoor Ballylee) once owned by the Irish poet WB Yeats near Gort, Co. Galway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoor_Ballylee

[Lucky Star]

A very interesting list Pete. Thanks. Unfortunately I'm not doing very well. I have only been to:

Old Thatch - Enid Blyton

The Dickens Museum - Doughty St London

The Jane Austen House - Chawton, Hampshire

The Bronte Parsonage Museum - Haworth, Yorkshire

I must try to visit some more. I discovered Thomas Hardy last year so I'd like to see his houses and Rudyard Kipling and Virginia Woolf's homes are within easy reach of me. Maybe this summer.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I like the look of Thoor Ballylee, Boodi. It makes me think of long-ago secrets.

I hope to go to The Brontë Parsonage Museum one of these days, John.

Here's a list of 35 you can visit.
I'm going to look through the list to see:

1. The top three author's houses I would like to visit.
2.The three actual house themselves I like the best.

I'm going to do that too, ignoring the ones I've already visited.

These are the three I'd most like to visit because I love the authors:

Thomas Hardy: Hardy's Cottage, Higher Bockhampton, Dorset (and Thomas Hardy: Max Gate, Dorchester, Dorset, since the two houses are so close together!)

Brontë Family: Parsonage Museum, Haworth, Yorkshire

John Milton: John Milton's Cottage, Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire


These are the three I'd most like to visit because I love the look of the houses:

Rudyard Kipling: Batemans, Burwash, East Sussex

William Wordsworth: Rydal Mount, Lake District (and William Wordsworth: Dove Cottage, Lake District, since the two houses are so close together!)

Anne Lister: Shibden Hall, Halifax, Yorkshire

[Hannah]

I've been to the Buddenbrookshaus in Lübeck which was once owned by the family of Thomas Mann (but I don't understand from the texts on the internet if he has lived there himself). It's now a museum and I've got to admit that I found it pretty boring while my friend - who had studied history - was very interested. The next time that a friend visited and wanted to go there, I let her go on her own .

[Wolfgang]

Who knows, maybe you could discover new details that might be of interest to you, Hannah.

I hope the travelling hazards around Christmas time didn't affect you.

[Hannah]

I travelled to my parents on the Thursday before Christmas and was really lucky - my train was probably one of the last that made it out of Hamburg before the storm really hit.

[pete9012S]

1. The top three author's houses I would like to visit.

1.Agatha Christie: Greenway, Devon
2.William Wordsworth: Rydal Mount, Lake District
3.Daphne du Maurier - Menabilly (Not on this list, but should be!)

Strangely, my answers remain the same..

2.The three actual house themselves I like the best.

1.Agatha Christie: Greenway, Devon
2.William Wordsworth: Rydal Mount, Lake District
3.Daphne du Maurier - Menabilly (Not on this list, but should be!)

Info on Daphne du Maurier:
https://www.visitcornwall.com/things-to ... s-cornwall

[Nick]

I've feeling that I stopped in Lowestoft a few years ago, may have been work related, and whilst I can't remember where or who, I'm pretty sure it was a B&B and it used to be the home of someone very accomplished in one of the arts

[Anita Bensoussane]

3.Daphne du Maurier - Menabilly (Not on this list, but should be!)

Info on Daphne du Maurier:
https://www.visitcornwall.com/things-to ... s-cornwall

I'd like to see Menabilly too, but I think visitors only have access to the grounds?

Another house I'd like to visit is The Kilns, home of C.S. Lewis in Headington, Oxford.

[Courtenay]

Another house I'd like to visit is The Kilns, home of C.S. Lewis in Headington, Oxford.

That's well worth it if you can get there — I went there some years ago and really enjoyed the tour. It's owned by a private foundation and used as accommodation for students doing degrees in theology, but it's open for guided tours at certain times for a reasonable fee. I've just found the website for it again — I wasn't sure if tours had resumed since the pandemic, but they have.

Of the authors' homes listed in the article earlier in this thread, I've been to Jane Austen's, Rudyard Kipling's, Beatrix Potter's, Wordsworth's (Rydal Mount — for some reason I don't think I've visited Dove Cottage yet), Coleridge's, and Gilbert White's. There are a few others there that are on my list, especially the World of James Herriot!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks, Courtenay. I'll have to book a tour of The Kilns at some stage.