Home where author Rudyard Kipling wrote Kim goes on sale at £1million... and it even comes with its own cricket square
The house where author Rudyard
Kipling wrote some of his most famous novels is on the market for the
first time in 40 years, complete with its own cricket pitch.
The Gables, in Tisbury, Wiltshire, was home to the author's parents for nearly 20 years, and Kipling wrote several of his masterpieces there, including Kim.
Kipling, whose works include The Jungle Book and Just So Stories, lived in Sussex, but would often come to stay with his parents for weeks at a time when he was working.
Now the five-bedroomed house the English writer knew so well is on the market for just shy of £1m at £950,000.
The mid-19th century property is made of local Chilmark stone and comes complete with 3.7 acres of sprawling land, including a tennis court and perfectly manicured cricket pitch.
It was bought by his parents, Alice and John Kipling, when they returned to England after a long spell in India.
They purchased the detached house as their son's writing star was on the rise, and he would travel from his Sussex house near Burwash, Batemans, to work there free from distraction.
It was during one of these many trips to Tisbury that Kipling largely wrote the novel considered by most to be his masterpiece, Kim.
His father contributed the illustrations for the tale of the Anglo-Indian beggar boy in Lahore in the 1890s, and used drawings of one of the pupils from Tisbury Boys' School as the model for the main character.
The house is currently owned by
John and Louise Young, who have lived there since the early 1970s, and
is being sold by Strutt & Parker's Salisbury office.
A spokesman for Strutt & Parker said: 'The Kipling parents were often visited here by their famous son, and while Rudyard was working on his novel Kim his father John, who illustrated it, used drawings of one of the pupils at Tisbury Boys' School as the model for the main character.'
The house is going on the market at the same time as it emerged that academics in the US have discovered 50 previously unpublished works dating from a time when Kipling and his wife tried, unsuccessfully, to settle in America.
Kipling was the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, at 42, and is still its youngest ever recipient.
The Gables, in Tisbury, Wiltshire, was home to the author's parents for nearly 20 years, and Kipling wrote several of his masterpieces there, including Kim.
Kipling, whose works include The Jungle Book and Just So Stories, lived in Sussex, but would often come to stay with his parents for weeks at a time when he was working.
Rudyard Kipling often stayed with his parents at The Gables, which is for sale for £950,000, for weeks at a time
The house (circled in red) where Rudyard Kipling
wrote some of his most famous novels comes with its very own cricket
pitch (circled in blue)
The mid-19th century property is made of local Chilmark stone and comes complete with 3.7 acres of sprawling land, including a tennis court and perfectly manicured cricket pitch.
It was bought by his parents, Alice and John Kipling, when they returned to England after a long spell in India.
They purchased the detached house as their son's writing star was on the rise, and he would travel from his Sussex house near Burwash, Batemans, to work there free from distraction.
It was during one of these many trips to Tisbury that Kipling largely wrote the novel considered by most to be his masterpiece, Kim.
His father contributed the illustrations for the tale of the Anglo-Indian beggar boy in Lahore in the 1890s, and used drawings of one of the pupils from Tisbury Boys' School as the model for the main character.
Rudyard Kipling, left, add as a boy, right, visited his parents John and Alice at The Gables frequently
The current owners of The Gables, who are selling up after 40 years, put in the cricket pitch behind the house
Rudyard Kipling and wife Carrie, left, and an aerial view of his parents' Wiltshire house, The Gables, right
The Gables has a modern kitchen, five bedrooms, and two bathrooms, and lies on the edge of Tisbury
Rudyard Kipling would spend weeks at at a time working at his parents' house, free from distraction
A spokesman for Strutt & Parker said: 'The Kipling parents were often visited here by their famous son, and while Rudyard was working on his novel Kim his father John, who illustrated it, used drawings of one of the pupils at Tisbury Boys' School as the model for the main character.'
The house is going on the market at the same time as it emerged that academics in the US have discovered 50 previously unpublished works dating from a time when Kipling and his wife tried, unsuccessfully, to settle in America.
Kipling was the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, at 42, and is still its youngest ever recipient.
Rudyard Kipling's parents settled at The Gables after many years in India, and were happy there
RUDYARD KIPLING: CHRONICLER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
Joseph
Rudyard Kipling was born in 1865 in Bombay to his British colonial
parents, John and Alice Kipling. His father was an artist and worked at
the Jeejeebhoy School Of Art in Bombay, and young Rudyard and his
sister enjoyed exploring local markets with their nanny.
When Kipling was six, his mother decided he needed an English education and sent him to live with a cruel foster family, the Holloways, while he attended school in Southsea. Mrs Holloway beat and bullied him and he struggled to fit in at school, finding comfort only in books.
At the age of 11, Kipling was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, so a family friend contacted his mother and she rushed over from India and removed him from the Holloways' clutches.
After finishing his schooling in
Devon, Kipling returned to India to work on a local newspaper. He also
began to write short stories, and published a collection of them,
entitled Plain Tales From The Hills, in 1888, just after his 22nd
birthday.
As Kipling's writing career burgeoned, he returned to England to great acclaim, having taken the scenic route to get there, via a long detour to North America.
The author's arrival in London was met with great acclaim, and he met and became friends with American agent and publisher Wolcott Balestier, at around the same time as he published The Light That Failed.
Kipling fell in love with Balestier's sister Carrie, and married her in London in 1891. The newlyweds moved to America and had a baby girl, Josephine, shortly after settling in Vermont in a house called Bliss Cottage.
It was in this cottage that
Kipling began work on what would become the Jungle Books - he had an
idea about a boy who was brought up by wolves.
In four years Kipling produced a series of Jungle Books, and a second daughter, Elsie, was born in 1896. His tales of and for children won huge acclaim, and by the age of 32, Kipling was the highest-paid writer in the world.
A legal scandal sent the Kiplings back to England, and another child, a son, John, was born in 1897. But tragedy struck when the Kiplings sailed back across the Atlantic to visit Carrie's mother: Rudyard and his elder daughter became seriously ill with pneumonia, and the child died. It was said Kipling never got over the tragedy.
The Kiplings returned to England and the picaresque novel Kim was serialised in a magazine and then published in book form in 1901.
In 1902 Kipling bought Batemans, a house dating back to 1634. Here, the author began to find some happiness again, and published his Just So Stories, which he had crafted for his late daughter as he put her to bed. The name came from his daughter's request for her father to repeat his stories for her just as he had first told them, or 'Just So'.
In 1907 he won the Nobel Prize
for Literature - the first English-language recipient - and in 1906 he
published Puck Of Pook's Hill and Rewards And Fairies, which contained
the poem If, came in 1910.
In 1915 Kipling travelled to France to report on the First World War, and his son John, to whom he had become very close in the wake of Josephine's death and for whom If was written, signed up with the Irish Guards thanks to his father pulling strings.
In October of that year the family heard John had gone missing in France but no trace of him was found. Kipling felt so guilty about encouraging his son to sign up, he went to France to search for him but no trace was ever found.
Kipling continued to write but, with two of his three children dead, had lost the will to write the children's stories that had made his name. He died in 1936 and his ashes were buried at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
When Kipling was six, his mother decided he needed an English education and sent him to live with a cruel foster family, the Holloways, while he attended school in Southsea. Mrs Holloway beat and bullied him and he struggled to fit in at school, finding comfort only in books.
At the age of 11, Kipling was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, so a family friend contacted his mother and she rushed over from India and removed him from the Holloways' clutches.
The Jungle Book, left, and Just So Stories, right, are still two of the most famous children's books ever written
As Kipling's writing career burgeoned, he returned to England to great acclaim, having taken the scenic route to get there, via a long detour to North America.
The author's arrival in London was met with great acclaim, and he met and became friends with American agent and publisher Wolcott Balestier, at around the same time as he published The Light That Failed.
Kipling fell in love with Balestier's sister Carrie, and married her in London in 1891. The newlyweds moved to America and had a baby girl, Josephine, shortly after settling in Vermont in a house called Bliss Cottage.
Rudyard Kipling and his wife Carrie in a carriage on their way to meet the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace, date unknown
In four years Kipling produced a series of Jungle Books, and a second daughter, Elsie, was born in 1896. His tales of and for children won huge acclaim, and by the age of 32, Kipling was the highest-paid writer in the world.
A legal scandal sent the Kiplings back to England, and another child, a son, John, was born in 1897. But tragedy struck when the Kiplings sailed back across the Atlantic to visit Carrie's mother: Rudyard and his elder daughter became seriously ill with pneumonia, and the child died. It was said Kipling never got over the tragedy.
The Kiplings returned to England and the picaresque novel Kim was serialised in a magazine and then published in book form in 1901.
In 1902 Kipling bought Batemans, a house dating back to 1634. Here, the author began to find some happiness again, and published his Just So Stories, which he had crafted for his late daughter as he put her to bed. The name came from his daughter's request for her father to repeat his stories for her just as he had first told them, or 'Just So'.
Batemans, the Kipling family's home in Burwash, Sussex, was were the author found some peace after losing his daughter
In 1915 Kipling travelled to France to report on the First World War, and his son John, to whom he had become very close in the wake of Josephine's death and for whom If was written, signed up with the Irish Guards thanks to his father pulling strings.
In October of that year the family heard John had gone missing in France but no trace of him was found. Kipling felt so guilty about encouraging his son to sign up, he went to France to search for him but no trace was ever found.
Kipling continued to write but, with two of his three children dead, had lost the will to write the children's stories that had made his name. He died in 1936 and his ashes were buried at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.