Batemans

[poliphilo]

I may have posted this picture earlier in the year, but never mind if I did. This is Kipling's Sussex home, "Bateman's". 



And here's the water mill at the bottom of his garden, where Dan and Una met Hal O' The Draft- and where,  in Below The Mill Dam, he imagines the spirit of the Mill wheel- somewhat senile- repeating its own entry in the Domesday Book to itself...

"Here Azor, a freeman, held one rod, but it never paid geld. Nun-nun-nunquam geldavit. here Reinbert has one villein and four cottars with one plough- and wood for six hogs and two fisheries of sixpence and a mill of ten shillings- unun molinum- one mill. Reinbert's mill- Robert's Mill. then and afterwards and now- tunc et post et modo- Robert's Mill. Book- Book- Domesday Book!"

Comments

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

How utterly lovely! I could live in that house - or even in the water mill building. I prefer the natural landscape around the water mill to the manicured lawn around Bateman's.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The house is 17th century.

Kipling's daughter gave it to the nation complete with furnishings- so it's maintained more or less as it was in Kipling's time.

A lot of the grounds are wild. It's very easy to imagine the Kipling children playing in the woods and by the stream- as they're shown as doing (under pseudonyms) in Puck of Pook's Hill