You might think a yearly rental fee of £11,500 for the grand Georgian former
home of Henry James in Rye, East Sussex, is something of a bargain – but
tenancy of Grade II*-listed Lamb House isn’t simply a matter of reclining in
the oak-panelled parlour and contemplating the American-born writer’s work.
Living there means taking on responsibilities that include greeting at least
7,000 members of the general public a year, on two afternoons a week between
March and October – James fans descend on the house, at the top of cobbled
West Street, in droves – as well as taking the entrance money and keeping
records of visitor numbers. You’ll also need to be well acquainted with the
writer’s life and works: many of your visitors will be James scholars from
across the Atlantic.
The four-storey, brick-fronted five-bedroom house was donated to the National
Trust in 1948 by the widow of James’s nephew and heir, “as a symbol of ties
that unite the British and American peoples”, and became part of the trust’s
long-term tenancy scheme. The most recent occupants, Sarah Philo, 30, and
her boyfriend, John Senior, 59, both educational writers, moved out two
weeks ago, and it is now in need of tenants.
You don’t have to be a writer to live here, says James Hole, of Strutt &
Parker’s Canterbury office, which is handling the tenancy – but you do have
to be house-proud. The National Trust stipulates that white gloves must be
worn to dust the many antiques, and a few of James’s own possessions, on
display. But, as the guidebook provided cautions, don’t dust too much:
that’s how things get broken.
Such obligations explain the modest rent – Hole says that an equivalent
property could fetch about £20,000 on the open market. Yet the opportunity
to live in the house where the author created his masterpieces captures the
imagination of many people. “We’ve had a hell of a response,” Hole says.
“Within a 10-day period, my list had about 85 people on it wanting to apply,
including a television presenter from Los Angeles. But you’ll have to get
involved. It’s quite a commitment.”
If you think you’d make the ideal tenant, you’ll need to hurry – applications
officially close this weekend, although Hole says he would consider someone
“spectacular”.
“It is a bit like living in a museum,” says Essex-born Philo, “but I like
that.” Philo and Senior first visited Lamb House a few years ago, chiefly as
fans of EF Benson – the writer of Mapp and Lucia rented the house in the
1920s. “This place draws you in,” Philo says. “It’s incredibly special.” So
special that they applied for tenancy and moved into the house in 2005.
James moved to London in 1876, then left for Rye in 1898, staying there until
he died, 18 years later. He adored the red roofs and cobbled streets of the
old town, and wrote of the house, which dates from 1723: “It is really good
enough to be a kind of little, becoming, high-door’d, brass-knocker’d facade
to one’s life.” It was there, in the garden room – a detached hall that was
destroyed by a bomb during the second world war – and the green-panelled
study on the first floor that he wrote the late works many critics consider
his finest: The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl.
Philo’s tour of the ground-floor public rooms, filled with exhibits (tenants
have private rooms on the top two floors), reveals how living in James’s
home means living very close to the man himself. In the dining room, tenants
can have breakfast overseen by a bust of a boy sculpted by Hendrik Andersen,
which James brought back from one of his European trips and mentioned fondly
in letters to friends. In the high-ceilinged hallway hang drawings of his
friends and correspondents, including fellow writers Conrad, Kipling and
Gosse. In the oak-panelled parlour, you can stand on the rug that Edith
Wharton – James’s dazzling protégée, who later outstripped him in popularity
– once trod, and admire his library of first editions.
Philo, who admits she didn’t know much about James at first, has clearly
learnt a lot – “He has grown on me enormously,” she says. After two years,
however, the couple felt their time for custodianship of the house was up.
“It’s an intense thing to do,” Philo says. “And the garden is a big job,”
adds Senior of the two acres of walled grounds that need to be kept as they
appear in old photos. Yet the couple plan to stay in the area, so enamoured
are they of the Cinque Port of Rye.
If you have aspirations to the literary life, but don’t fancy having to let
the public over your threshold, there are plenty of other properties
available for sale or rent.
For something a bit racy, head up to the Nottinghamshire countryside, where DH
Lawrence set many of his best-loved – and infamous – novels. Retrace the
writer’s steps through the woods in the hamlet of Moorgreen, where he
imagined the scandalous trysts between upper-class Constance, trapped in a
sexless marriage, and the taciturn gamekeeper Mellors, set out in Lady
Chatterley’s Lover in 1928.
These forests – part of the original Sherwood Forest – inspired Wragby, the
remote Chatterley family estate, and it was here that the Lawrentian themes
of nature and man’s alienation from it in an industrial world were formed.
“It’s absolutely beautiful here. Lawrence, who was brought up just a mile
away in Eastwood, wrote about the landscape he knew, as well as the local
people,” says Howard Pratt, 57, a structural engineer who has owned Beauvale
House, a Grade II*-listed property surrounded by woods in Moorgreen, since
the late 1980s.
Moreover, Lawrence almost certainly visited Beauvale House, built in 1873, as
he had a friend on the staff there, and it is believed that he used it as a
model for the Beardsall family’s home in The White Peacock, his first novel,
published in the UK in 1911. He writes that the house “dozed in sunlight,
and slept profoundly in the shade thrown by the massive maples encroaching
from the wood”.
“It’s a complete one-off,” says Pratt of his home, built as a hunting lodge by
EW Godwin for the 7th Earl Cowper. With six bedrooms, four reception rooms,
a 90ft tower and 5,960 sq ft of living space, it is for sale for £1.4m with
Humberts (0115 950 5444, www.humberts.co.uk).
Fans of contemporary literature might do better to head down to west Somerset,
following the trail of the bestselling novelist and children’s writer
Penelope Lively. In 2001, she wrote a memoir, A House Unlocked, in which she
recalls her many childhood visits to her grandparents’ home, Golsoncott
House, in Rodhuish.
In the book, she reconstructs life there through memories of her family (her
grandparents bought the house in 1923, and it stayed in the family until the
1990s) and everyday objects such as potted-meat jars and needlework
samplers. “The house as I knew it exists only in my mind,” she writes in the
preface. “The furnishings are precise and clear, the sounds and smells are
as they ever were . . . ahead of me, the garden door frames a green section
of Somerset.” She decided to set domestic life against two shattering events
in European history, the Blitz and the Holocaust. “I thought I would see if
the private life of a house could be made to bear witness to the public
traumas of a century,” she explains.
Built in the Lutyens style in 1912, Grade II-listed Golsoncott sits in 13
acres and has five bedrooms, a staff flat, a lake and a stable block. Its
last owner died recently, and the beamed house, with its glorious views over
Exmoor national park, is available to shape a new owner’s interior life and
landscape. It is for sale for £1.75m with Jackson-Stops & Staff
(01823 325144, www.jackson-stops.co.uk).
For inquiries about tenancy at Lamb House, contact Strutt & Parker; 01227
473729, www.struttandparker.co.uk
Novel homes
Beauvale House, which inspired DH Lawrence: £1.4m, Humberts; www.humberts.co.uk
Golsoncott, Penelope Lively’s family home: £1.75m, Jackson-Stops &
Staff; www.jackson-stops.co.uk
