Keats House

Keats House
Middlesex
Keats House
Location
Grid reference:	TQ27118567
Location:	51°33’20"N, 0°10’6"W
Town:	Hampstead
History
	Built 1814–16
	Regency
Information

Keats House is a writer's house museum in what was once the home of the Romantic poet John Keats. It stands in Keats Grove in Hampstead, Middlesex.

Maps before about 1915 show the road with one of its earlier names, John Street; the road has also been known as Albion Grove. The building was originally a pair of semi-detached houses known as "Wentworth Place". John Keats lodged in one of them with his friend Charles Brown (took the middle name 'Armitage' later in his life). These were perhaps Keats's most productive years. According to Brown, "Ode to a Nightingale" was written under a plum tree in the garden.

While living in the house, Keats fell in love with and became engaged to Fanny Brawne, who lived with her family in the adjacent house. Keats became increasingly ill with tuberculosis and was advised to move to a warmer climate. He left London in 1820 and died, unmarried, in Italy the following year.

The house is a Grade I listed building.

History of the house

The house was built during 1814–15 and was probably completed between November 1815 and February 1816. The house was one of the first to be built in the area known as the Lower Heath Quarter.

By October 1816, Charles Wentworth Dilke and his friend Charles Brown had moved in. Other members of the Dilke family occupied two other adjacent houses. John Keats began visiting the house in 1817 after he had been introduced to Dilke by John Hamilton Reynolds, who was part of Leigh Hunt's circle of friends. In December 1818, after Keats's brother Tom died of tuberculosis, Brown invited Keats to "keep house" with him. Keats paid £5 per month and half the liquor bill.

Dilke and his family left on 3 April 1819 and let the house, probably furnished, to Mrs Brawne, a widow, and her family, who had briefly occupied Brown's half of the house when Keats and Brown were on their walking tour of Scotland.

Brown transferred his part of Wentworth Place to Dilke's father on 18 June 1822 and left for Italy in the same year.

After Keats's 1821 death, his sister Fanny became friends with Fanny Brawne. Fanny Keats and her husband Valentin Llanos occupied what had been Brown's half of the house from 1828 until 1831. Mrs Brawne died in December 1829 from an accident. By March 1830, the Brawnes had left their part.

The two houses were joined in 1838–9 and a drawing-room was added. The house was in nearly continuous occupation until the 20th century, when it was threatened with demolition. The house was saved by subscription and opened to the public as the Keats Memorial House on 9 May 1925.

There were several notable occupants of the house during the 19th century: the painter and illustrator Henry Courtney Selous (1835–1838); Miss Chester (1838–1848), a retired actress, who had once been a favourite of George IV, who converted the house into one dwelling and added a dining room and conservatory; the piano manufacturer Charles Cadby (1858–1865); the physiologist Dr William Sharpey (1867–1875); and finally George Currey, Master of Charterhouse School|Charterhouse (1876). A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque was unveiled in 1896 to commemorate Keats at the house.

In July and August 2009, the museum once again hosted Keats in Hampstead, a performance piece about Keats's life in Hampstead, his poetry, prose and his love for Fanny Brawne.

Museum

The building next door, within the grounds of the house, occupies the space where the kitchen garden and outhouses were; it was also the site of a later coach house. It was opened on 16 July 1931 as the 'Keats Museum and Branch Library', housing both a public library and a room to display artefacts from the Keats House collection. Some of these artefacts were donated by Charles Armitage Brown's descendants in New Plymouth, New Zealand, the town to which Charles Brown emigrated in the last year of his life. The Heath Branch Public Library closed in March 2012. The building, which is part of the Keats House Trust administered by the Corporation of London, reopened in April 2012 as "Ten Keats Grove". A volunteer-run library currently occupies part of the space in the building.

Artefacts on display in the house include the engagement ring Keats offered to Fanny Brawne and a copy of Keats's death mask. The museum runs regular poetry and literary events, and offers a range of educational facilities. In December 2006 it was announced that the house was to benefit from a restoration.

To support the work of the house and to contribute to its upkeep, the Keats Foundation was established as a Trust in November 2010.

Garden: the Mulberry tree

The tree is a Common or Black Mulberry and believed to date from the 17th century. As there were other fruit trees in the grounds of Keats House, the mulberry tree may have been part of an orchard. If the tree is as old as it is thought to be, then John Keats would have seen it, although he did not mention it in his writings. Keats did mention a white mulberry tree once in a July 1818 letter to his friend John Hamilton Reynolds.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Keats House)

• Keats House
• Keats-Shelley Memorial House, Rome
• The Keats Foundation
• A History of the County of Middlesex - Volume 9 pp 138-145: Hampstead: public services (Victoria County History)