Kelmscott Manor
Kelmscott Manor, the country home of William Morris, poet, craftsman and socialist, from 1871 until his death in 1896, was proclaimed by his daughters to be "the only house in England worth inhabiting". He himself called the village of Kelmscott "heaven on earth" and Kelmscott Manor "the loveliest haunt of ancient peace".
The manor was intended to be a holiday home, an escape from the city, habitable only in summer owing to lack of heating and winter floods. However, those familiar with the lives of the Pre-Raphaelites will recognize that Kelmscott also existed as a different type of retreat: a shared house deep in the country, out of the reach of gossipmongers, it was the perfect refuge for Janey Morris to spend time with her husband's friend, the prominent painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In fact, Morris left for Iceland shortly after bringing Janey and his daughters to Kelmscott. Rossetti immediately set up his painting studio in the Tapesty Room, which may be visited today.
In fact, much of the house is open to visitors and contains an amazing collection of the possessions and works of Morris and his associates, including furniture, textiles, carpets and ceramics, not to mention precious works of art in the form of tapestries and paintings: of particular note, the unfinished embroidered hanging, Queen Guenevere and Rossetti's portraits of Janey, Blue Silk Dress, as well as Water Willow, a copy of which hangs in the bedroom she occupied.
With its barns, dovecot, orchard, stream, meadow and formal garden, the gardens are as impressive as the house. Enclosed by high walls and divided by hedges, it conformed to Morris's ideal of the garden "fenced off from the outside world" and provided a constant source of inspiration, evidenced in his textile and wallpaper designs.
Kelmscott itself is a treasure, with every turning revealing a tribute to Morris, from the stone sculpture on the semi-detached memorial cottages, showing Morris sitting in the home mead west of the Manor, to the modestly marked family gravestone in the churchyard of the parish church.
Be sure to visit another Morris family home, Red House, on the outskirts of London in Bexleyheath.
Date of Our Visit: August 2005