Elfin Cottage - For Sale!

[Rob Houghton]

Our local paper has a property insert every Saturday, and this week featured a few houses of famous people around the country that are for sale - one of which is Enid's first marital home, 'Elfin Cottage' (though its no longer called that sadly!)

I took a photo of the newspaper article - apologies if its a bit hard to read. It was in The Birmingham Mail!

Going for a snip at the ridiculous price of £1 million - even though its described as needing 'sprucing up'!!

[Boatbuilder]

Hmmm! £1M? I wonder what it cost new in the 1920's?

[pete9012S]

Thanks Rob. More info here:

https://charleseden.co.uk/property-for- ... jl/2222710" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Rob Houghton]

Thanks Pete! I don't find it a very picturesque house - and the rooms are very basic! However, I like the back view - far nicer than the front! Its funny Enid called it 'Elfin Cottage' because its hardly 'Elfin' or a 'Cottage'!

[Eddie Muir]

Very interesting! I also wonder what it cost in the 1920s.

[John Pickup]

Thanks for posting that Rob.

[Julie2owlsdene]

I certainly wouldn't pay 1 million for it, as it does need updating. But it could make a nice home.

[pete9012S]

Can't find details of the original price anywhere - here's a few brief details from the excellent Enid Blyton biography by Barbara Stoney that mention Elfin Cottage:

Elfin Cottage, as Enid was eventually to call her first ‘real home’, was one of several newly-built, detached houses in Shortlands Road, Beckenham..

It was easy enough for Hugh to travel daily into the City and yet, in those days, the area was still fairly rural with fields and woods where estates of houses now stand...

Although Elfin Cottage was new, Enid and Hugh both felt it had an air of solidity and maturity, with its handmade greyish-yellow bricks, its blue painted front door and shuttered windows and the fact that the garden was still unmade, being little more than an enclosed piece of meadowland, was yet another attraction for them.

Enid could not contain her excitement. She was not by nature domesticated – even the simplest cookery defeated her, and housework was usually delegated to someone else – but for a while she devoted herself wholeheartedly to the affairs of her new home. She scoured the stores to buy furniture and fittings and helped Hugh plan the layout of the garden. She busied herself making cushion covers, lampshades and curtains, frequently visited Beckenham to see how the final work on the house was progressing and planted dozens of bulbs in the garden...

Hugh was caught up in her enthusiasm and happiness and looked forward as eagerly as his wife to the move into their new home. This came on 5 February 1926...

All the furniture came during the day and everything went splendidly! … It’s lovely to be at ‘Elfin Cottage’ at last … to wake up and hear the birds, instead of buses and trams!

She spent the rest of that week organising her new household and did not get back to her writing until Monday the 15th, having taken what was, for her, an unusually long break of sixteen days. From then on, however, the daily stint of work at her desk continued as before and her readers were to learn much of Elfin Cottage, its occupants and garden – particularly the garden – in the months that were to follow, for she wrote about them frequently in her Teachers’ World column and they appeared, by implication, in many of her poems and stories.

From my Window of 3 March was entirely devoted to the move and the new home – because I can’t really think of much else at present and also because I want to say that ‘Elfin Cottage’ is true, and not a place I’ve invented out of my imagination … She wrote of how she had arranged her furniture ‘placing a window seat here, and my desk there and shelves somewhere else …’ and of how she had lit a fire in the brick fireplace and watched the firelight flicker over the primrose walls and bowls of flowers she had arranged, adding: Flowers ‘belong’ to Elfin Cottage. They look at home there – and that confirms my secret belief that fairies and elves, brownies and gnomes have visited the house and left some of their flower-loving, sunshiny personalities behind...

It’s such a happy, cheerful, elfish little house, the right place for poetry and fairy stories, dreams and laughter. She insisted on ‘christening’ the cottage herself, by screwing the name on to the gate, but found it difficult to make the screws go in straight and keep the letters in a line...

[Eddie Muir]

Thanks, Pete. I must reread Barbara Stoney's biography.

[Courtenay]

Not as picturesque as Old Thatch, but if we all pitch in together, do you think we could buy it and turn it into our own Enid Blyton museum and Society clubroom?? I’ve got 86p in change to start us off with...

[Jack400]

If I lived up there and had £1m to spend I'd be interested. It would make a good E.B.S. 'day' - and I wouldn't have far to travel...

[Rob Houghton]

Not as picturesque as Old Thatch, but if we all pitch in together, do you think we could buy it and turn it into our own Enid Blyton museum and Society clubroom?? I’ve got 86p in change to start us off with...

I'll chip in an old American cent, two farthings and a Noddy badge!

[Daisy]

Well that's a start!

[Kate Mary]

I'm not surprised it's up for a million, it is Beckenham and houses in that area go for silly money. Interesting to see it though. The word 'Authoress' on the plaque grates a bit, what's wrong with 'author' or even 'writer for children'?

[Rob Houghton]

I think 'author' is better...though for some reason I dislike the ever-increasing use of the word 'actor' because its difficult to say 'that actor who played so-and-so' when you're talking about an actress. I much prefer 'actor' and 'actress' - because when you say 'who was that actor in Gone With the Wind?' -- you might not be talking about Vivien Leigh. .