Yesterday we blogged about book-inspired summer homes, and now we have news over another house that may go on your wish-list. It’s The Gables, in Tisbury, Wiltshire, where Rudyard Kipling’s parents lived for over 20 years and apparently where Kipling wrote most of his famous novel, Kim.  And if you fancy a home with such a wonderful literary history, it is now on the market, for a mere £950,000. Read more in The Telegraph here…

It’s rather lovely to imagine Kipling penning his masterpiece in one of those rooms and I can now add this to my list of houses with interesting literary legacies behind them. I recently read the delightful memoir Three Houses, by Angela Thirkell (Kipling’s cousin and Colin MacInnes‘ mother) in which she recalls her childhood years spent in three houses. One of the three was the seaside retreat belonging to her grandfather, the painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones, near where Rudyard Kipling (‘cousin Ruddy’) lived and she describes them playing Cavaliers and Roundheads together:

‘We threw ourselves into the fray with all the more ardour when the  Roundhead of the day happened to be our cousin, Rudyard Kipling, who lived at The Elms across the village green. The three Kipling children, Josephine, Elsie, and John were about the same ages as our nursery three. Josephine, very fair-haired and blue-eyed, was my bosom friend, and though we both adored her father, the stronger bond of patriotism drew us yet more firmly together at Cavaliers against Cousin Ruddy’s whole-hearted impersonation of an Arch-Roundhead.‘

Now that I can picture Kipling at The Gables, I’m curious to suss out the house he grew up in at The Elms. I’ll keep checking The Telegraph‘s property pages…

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity & Online Marketing Manager