Our attention turns to all things literary this week after the return of the Hay Festival. It comes during a bumper year for book sales, when lockdown encouraged many of us to read more and escape our repetitive reality for fictional worlds.
But what of the authors’ own abodes? Here we look at five homes for sale with links to literary greats.
Agatha Christie – Winterbrook House
The Queen of Crime bought this five-bedroom house in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan in 1934 and lived there until her death in 1976, taking inspiration for her popular detective fiction from her surroundings. ‘She wrote some of her bestselling novels in the house and Winterbrook itself is thought to have been the model for Danemead – Miss Marple’s house in the village of St Mary Mead,’ says Stephen Christie-Miller (no relation), head of residential sales at Savills Henley. The house is on the market for offers in excess of £2.75m.
Set in about five acres by the River Thames, the Grade II-listed property has a blue plaque on its Queen Anne façade to acknowledge its connection to the literary dame. The main house, which has a one-bedroom cottage attached, has a dual aspect library with a working fireplace – but hopefully no body.
Kenneth Grahame – The Old Sawmills
Only accessible by boat or on foot, this secluded Cornish home is situated in its own creek, Bodmin Pill, on a bank of the River Fowey. The picturesque setting is said to have inspired Grahame, a regular visitor to the nearby town of Fowey, for a picnic scene featuring Mole and Rat by a mill house in the opening chapter of his classic children’s book The Wind in the Willows: ‘It was so very beautiful that the Mole could only hold up both forepaws and gasp, “O my! O my! O my!”‘
But its link to the 1908 novel is not the Old Sawmills’ only claim to creative fame: more recently, musical acts including Robert Plant, Oasis, the Stone Roses and Supergrass have found inspiration in the property’s recording studio.
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