Alfoxton House
51°09′55″N 3°13′12″W / 51.1652°N 3.2201°W / 51.1652; -3.2201
Alfoxton House, also known as Alfoxton Park or Alfoxden, is an 18th-century country house in Holford, Somerset, England, within the Quantock Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The present house was rebuilt in 1710 after the previous building was destroyed in a fire.[1]
History
The poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy lived at Alfoxton House between July 1797 and June 1798, during the time of their friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.[2] Dorothy began her journals here in January 1798 but discontinued them 2 months later to recommence when the couple moved to the Lake District.[3] These were posthumously published as The Alfoxden Journal, 1798 and The Grasmere Journals, 1800-1803.
The building was refenestrated and re-roofed in the 19th century. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II listed building.[3] During World War II it housed evacuees from Wellington House Preparatory School at Westgate-on-Sea in Kent.[4] After use as a country hotel followed by a period of disuse, the house was sold in January 2018.[5] It was again for sale (with 50 acres) in July 2018,[6] and in 2020 purchased for about £2 million by the Alfoxton Park Trust for use by the Triratna Buddhist Community.[7]
Building
Alfoxton House was built in the 18th century of rendered rubble stone, the main block being on a double-pile plan, i.e. two main rooms on each side of a central corridor. The house is two storeys high, with an attic that includes dormer windows. The frontage includes a central porch with columns, frieze and cornice in a Doric style. There is an extension to the left, originally an orangery, with a steep roof over a verandah. The wall includes the coat of arms of the St Albyn family who owned the house for many years.[3]
References
- ^ "Alfoxton Park Hotel". Information Britain. Archived from the original on 1 May 2005. Retrieved 31 August 2016.
- ^ "Stringston". British History Online. Retrieved 31 August 2016.
- ^ a b c "Alfoxton Park Hotel". historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved 31 August 2016.
- ^ Waite, Vincent (1964). Portrait of the Quantocks. London: Robert Hale. ISBN 0-7091-1158-4.
- ^ Jones, Paul (5 January 2018). "Derelict Alfoxton Park, Somerset, former hotel and home of poet William Wordsworth, sold". Somerset County Gazette.
- ^ "Historic Somerset country house hotel and estate for sale | Christie & Co".
- ^ Simpson, Craig (30 July 2020). "William Wordsworth's idyllic home to become Buddhist retreat". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
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- Early life
- Lake Poets
- Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
- "Anecdote for Fathers"
- "The Idiot Boy"
- "Lucy Gray"
- The Lucy poems
- The Matthew poems
- "Michael, a Pastoral"
- Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey
- "Poor Susan"
- "We Are Seven"
- Poems, in Two Volumes
- Peter Bell
- The White Doe of Rylstone
- "Composed upon Westminster Bridge"
- "Elegiac Stanzas"
- "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"
- The Lucy poems
- "London, 1802"
- "My Heart Leaps Up"
- "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
- "Resolution and Independence"
- "On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic"
- "The Solitary Reaper"
- "The World Is Too Much with Us"
- "To a Butterfly"
- "Character of the Happy Warrior"
- The Yarrow poems
- Dora Wordsworth (daughter)
- Dorothy Wordsworth (sister)
- Christopher Wordsworth (brother)
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Robert Southey
- Wordsworth House (birthplace and childhood home)
- Alfoxton House (1797-1798)
- Dove Cottage (1799-1808)
- Allan Bank (1808-1811)
- Rydal Mount (1813-1850)