Farringford House

Farringford House
Hampshire
Location
Grid reference:	SZ33738616
Location:	50°40’27"N, 1°31’27"W
Village:	Freshwater
History
	Built 1806
	Country house
Information
Website:	farringford.co.uk

Farringford House stands in the village of Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight in Hampshire. It was the home of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from 1853 until his death in 1892.

The main house dates from 1806 with Gothic embellishments and extensions added from the 1830s. Of particular historical importance is the second library built by his wife Emily Tennyson in 1871 with a playroom below connected by a turreted winding staircase. The grounds are laid to lawn, rose borders and informal planting. Evidence remains of Tennyson's planting schemes together with a section of the walled garden and wooden footpaths.

Farringford (c 1910)

The house and grounds have undergone a programme of restoration having been a hotel since they left the Tennyson family's ownership in the 1940s. The house opened in 2017 as a historic house/museum. Guided tours are available to book April to October. Group visits, writers' retreats, creative workshops, concerts and exhibitions are part of the offering. On the estate there are ten self-catering cottages which are available all year round, there is also a tennis court and children's play area.

The estate is located on Bedbury Lane, Freshwater Bay, on the western tip of the Isle of Wight. Some of the surrounding houses, particularly those in Middleton at the start of Moons Hill are connected with Farringford's history, once forming part of the estate. The houses at the end of Queens Road, the junction near the farm used to be stables where Fred Pontin's horses were kept.

Tennyson wrote of Farringford:

Where, far from noise and smoke of town
I watch the twilight falling brown,
All round a careless-ordered garden,
Close to the ridge of a noble down.

Tennyson rented Farringford in 1853, and then bought it in 1856. He found that there were too many star-struck tourists who pestered him in Farringford, so in 1869 he moved to "Aldworth", a stately home in Sussex on a hill known as Blackdown between Lurgashall and Fernhurst, about a mile south of Haslemere. However, he returned to Farringford to spend the winters.

See also

• Tennyson Down, a location near Farringford House
• The Tennyson Trail

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Farringford House)

• Farringford Holiday Village
• Farringford House, Freshwater, Isle of Wight: BBC, h2g2, 8 September 2004.