Bateman's

 

Today I visited the beautiful Batemans, former home of Rudyard Kipling. With it's walled vegetable patch and orchard, sandstone building boasting enormous chimneys, a rose garden and lily pond, the mill house to name but a few of its highlights, it makes for a wonderful place to visit on a Summer's afternoon. 

Bateman's sits nestled in the High Weald countryside, surrounded by fields and woodland. The garden that made Rudyard Kipling feel like an English country gentleman is a feast for the eyes in any season; from spring blossom to summer roses, autumn apples to winter trees.

'That's She! The Only She! Make an honest woman of her - quick!' was how Rudyard Kipling and his wife, Carrie, felt the first time they saw Bateman's.

Surrounded by the wooded landscape of the Sussex Weald, this 17th-century house, with its mullioned windows and oak beams, provided a much needed sanctuary to this world-famous writer and inspired his work.

The rooms, described by him as 'untouched and unfaked', remain much as he left them, with oriental rugs and artefacts reflecting his strong association with the East. Kipling wrote Puck of Pook’s Hill and Rewards and Fairies at Bateman's, which includes the poem ‘If’. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907.

Bateman's is very much a family home that feels as though the Kiplings have just gone out for the day.

It's hard writing about the Kiplings and not thinking about cake! Just to confirm, they are not related (Is Mr Kipling even a real person?!).