Blake society seeks to fix up cottage in green and pleasant land
THE cottage where William Blake wrote Jerusalem is at risk of collapse, as campaigners seek to demolish a 1970s extension to the 17th-century building.
The thatched roof of the cottage in Felpham where Blake and his wife Catherine lived from 1800 to 1803 is crushing its timbers, and Historic England has added the Grade Ii-listed property to its at-risk register.
The Blake Cottage Trust which bought the West Sussex property from a private owner in 2015 is seeking £450,000 for repairs.
Jonathan Mullard, of the trust, said: “We’re fundraising. Part of that money will be to remove the 1970s features. There’s a bungalow built on the end.
“We want to remove those extraneous additions to bring the cottage back to something Blake would have known. It’s there that he wrote the words that we now consider the hymn Jerusalem. It is the most important physical artefact of Blake’s creative life.”
Blake spent most of his life in London apart from the three years in the cottage, one of only two places he lived still standing. The roof beams are buckling after damp and woodworm, which has also caused the walls to bend.
Alma Howell, at Historic England, said: “It’s one of the most important places in English literary history, where he composed his most significant works, and something that we are all connected to – ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. It’s such an important site for English history. He fell in love with it.” Blake was among the first of Britain’s Romantic poets, and key examples of this verse were said to be inspired by his bucolic surroundings in Felpham, including the words to the future hymn Jerusalem, published in the preface to his epic Milton and later set to music by Sir Hubert Parry.
His home is also mentioned in a poem in one of his letters, which said: “Away to sweet Felpham, for Heaven is there / The ladder of Angels descends through the air”.
Blake enjoyed “the sweet air and the voices of winds, trees and birds” and found the locals “polite and modest”. However, he was charged with sedition during his stay for allegedly damning the king in the presence of an officer he had thrown off his land.
His cottage, which trustees hope to make suitable for visitors and creative residencies by the 200th anniversary of Blake’s death in 2027, is “at risk” along with 129 other sites across England.
These include the 17th-century Bourn Mill in Cambridgeshire, one of the country’s oldest windmills, with rotting timber. The Severn Wharf building, part of the Unesco-designated industrial landscape at Ironbridge in Shropshire, has structural issues which put the warehouse at risk.
While Blake’s former home is under threat, Historic England has announced good news for the former residence of his fellow Romantic Lord Byron.
A mock fort and dock built on the lakeside near his home of Newstead Abbey in Derbyshire has been declared “saved” after its masonry was secured.
There’s a pretty flint cottage with a brick chimney and thatched roof on the road from the seashore at Felpham in West Sussex, and William Blake lived there with his wife Catherine from 1800 to 1803. The trust that owns it cannot afford to mend the roof or turn the place into a study centre as it would like. So what is to be done? It is not as though Blake was happy there. The Fox public house nearby (named after a Customs cutter), still open to all, was the scene of a row with a soldier that led to Blake’s arrest for sedition. The poet did develop preliminary work at Felpham that gave rise to Jerusalem, the lyric found in his strange book on Milton. But we celebrate that poem by singing it at the last night of the Proms. Can’t someone be found to live in Blake’s Cottage? Visitors could then see it on their way to the Fox.