Bateman's
50°59′21″N 0°22′45″E / 50.9893°N 0.3793°E / 50.9893; 0.3793
Bateman's is a 17th-century house located in Burwash, East Sussex, England. It was the home of Rudyard Kipling from 1902 until his death in 1936. The house was built in 1634. Kipling's widow Caroline bequeathed the house to the National Trust on her death in 1939. The house is a Grade I listed building.
History
Bateman's is a Jacobean Wealden mansion constructed in 1634.[2] There is debate as to the original builder. Historic England follows the tradition favoured by Kipling of ascribing the construction to a Sussex ironmaster, John Britten.[3] The historian Adam Nicolson reports the tradition in the National Trust's guidebook, but notes that Britten was a dealer in iron, rather than a manufacturer.[4] Pevsner attributes the construction to a lawyer, William Langham.[2]
By the early twentieth century, the house had descended to the status of a farmhouse, and was in a poor state of repair.[1] The Kiplings first saw it in 1900, on returning to England from America, following the death of their daughter Josephine in 1899 and a disastrous falling-out between them and Carrie Kipling's brother, Beatty Balestier.[5] Enchanted by the house, they were too slow in making an offer and it was let for two years. In 1902, they were able to purchase it, with 33 acres of land,[6] from a wealthy stockbroker, Alexander Carron Scrimgeour.[7]
In 1900, Kipling was the most famous author in England,[8] and was earning £5,000 per year; the cost of Bateman's, £9,300, was thus entirely affordable.[5] Kipling wrote some of his finest works at the house including: "If—", "The Glory of the Garden", and Puck of Pook's Hill, named after the hill visible from the house.[8] The house's setting and the wider local area features in many of his stories. Kipling's poem "The Land" is inspired by the Bateman's estate.[9]
Kipling's only son, John, was killed at the Battle of Loos on 29 September 1915.[10] Kipling died on 18 January 1936, of peritonitis.[11] Carrie died three years later, in 1939. Under the terms of her will the house passed to the National Trust.[1]
Architecture and description
The house is built of sandstone to a double-pile plan, and is of two storeys with gables above.[3] The eastern entrance, front may once have been symmetrical with a northern wing matching the southern one.[3] Historic England's listing states that the wing was constructed but later torn down,[3] while Pevsner suggests that it may never have been built.[2] The windows are mullioned and the roof has an "impressive row of six diamond-shaped red brick chimney stacks".[3]
The interior is retained as it was in the time of the Kiplings.[3] The study is almost as Kipling left it, although without the "pungent aroma" of his forty-a-day Turkish cigarette habit.[12] The house contains a significant collection relating to Kipling, amounting to nearly 5,000 individual pieces, including his Nobel Prize, his Rolls-Royce Phantom I, many oriental items he purchased while living in India or touring in the East and paintings he collected by Edward Poynter, Edward Burne-Jones and James Whistler.[13]
The garden was created by Kipling from 1907, using the prize money from his award of the Nobel Prize in Literature.[14] The house is a Grade I listed building, the highest grade reserved for buildings of "exceptional interest".[3]
Park Mill
There is a water mill on the estate, powered by water from the River Dudwell. The earliest reference to a mill relates to its construction between 1246 and 1248, and first mentioned with the name 'Park' in 1618. The present mill was built between 1751 and 1753, and extended in the 1830s. It became part of the Bateman's estate in the late 19th-century.[15] By Kipling's time, the mill was no longer in operation and he installed an electric turbine in it to provide power for the house.[2] The mill was restored by the Trust in 1975,[2] and again between 2017 and 2020.[15] The mill is itself Grade II listed.[16]
Notes
- ^ a b c "History at Bateman's". National Trust.
- ^ a b c d e Antram & Pevsner 2013, p. 295.
- ^ a b c d e f g Historic England. "Bateman's, Burwash (1044063)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
- ^ Nicolson 1999, p. 8.
- ^ a b Nicolson 1999, p. 5.
- ^ Nicolson 1999, p. 37.
- ^ "Batemans and adjoining land, Park House Watermill and part of Dudwell Farm, purchased by Rudyard Kipling on 28 Jul 1902". The National Archives. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
- ^ a b Aslet 2005, pp. 55–56.
- ^ The Land: words and a sung version
- ^ "Solving the mystery of Kipling's son". BBC News. 16 September 2018.
- ^ Rickets 2000, p. 388.
- ^ Garnett 2015, p. 24.
- ^ "Bateman's". www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk. National Trust Collections. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
- ^ Jenkins 2003, pp. 749–750.
- ^ a b Wilmshurst 2020, p. 3.
- ^ "Historic England List Entry 1352936". Retrieved 18 March 2022.
Sources
- Antram, Nicholas; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2013). Sussex: East. The Buildings of England. New Haven, US & London, UK: Yale University Press. ISBN 9-780300-18473-0. OCLC 826658807.
- Aslet, Clive (2005). Landmarks of Britain. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-340-73510-7.
- Garnett, Oliver (2015). Rudyard Kipling at Bateman's. London: National Trust. ISBN 978-1-84359-452-9. OCLC 944313789.
- Jenkins, Simon (2003). England's Thousand Best Houses. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-713-99596-3.
- Nicolson, Adam (1999). Bateman's. London: National Trust. ISBN 9781843591368. OCLC 967909099.
- Ricketts, Harry (2000). Rudyard Kipling: A Life. London: Carroll & Graf. p. 388. ISBN 978-0-7867-0830-7.
- Wilmshurst, Alan (2020). Park Mill at Bateman's. Swindon, UK: National Trust.
External links
- Bateman's information at the National Trust
- The Kipling Society
- v
- t
- e
- The Light That Failed (1891)
- The Naulahka: A Story of West and East (co-author, Wolcott Balestier, 1892)
- Captains Courageous (1896)
- Kim (1901)
- Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)
- Soldiers Three (1888)
- The Story of the Gadsbys (1888)
- In Black and White (1888)
- The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales (1888)
- Under the Deodars (1888)
- Wee Willie Winkie and Other Child Stories (1888)
- From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel (1889)
- Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, poetry)
- Many Inventions (1893)
- The Jungle Book (1894)
- "Mowgli's Brothers"
- "Kaa's Hunting"
- "Tiger! Tiger!"
- "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"
- The Second Jungle Book (1895)
- "Letting in the Jungle"
- "Red Dog"
- All the Mowgli Stories (c. 1895)
- The Seven Seas (1896, poetry)
- The Day's Work (1898)
- Stalky & Co. (1899)
- Just So Stories (1902)
- The Five Nations (1903, poetry)
- Puck of Pook's Hill (1906)
- Rewards and Fairies (1910)
- The Fringes of the Fleet (1915, non-fiction)
- Debits and Credits (1926)
- Limits and Renewals (1932)
- Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Definitive Edition (1940)
- A Choice of Kipling's Verse (by T. S. Eliot, 1941)
- "The Absent-Minded Beggar"
- "The Ballad of the 'Clampherdown'"
- "The Ballad of East and West"
- "The Beginnings"
- "The Bell Buoy"
- "The Betrothed"
- "Big Steamers"
- "Boots"
- "Cold Iron"
- "Dane-geld"
- "Danny Deever"
- "A Death-Bed"
- "The Female of the Species"
- "Fuzzy-Wuzzy"
- "Gentleman ranker"
- "The Gods of the Copybook Headings"
- "Gunga Din"
- "Hymn Before Action"
- "If—"
- "In the Neolithic Age"
- "The King's Pilgrimage"
- "The Last of the Light Brigade"
- "The Lowestoft Boat"
- "Mandalay"
- "The Mary Gloster"
- "McAndrew's Hymn"
- "My Boy Jack"
- "Recessional"
- "A Song in Storm"
- "The Sons of Martha"
- "Submarines"
- "The Sweepers"
- "Tommy"
- "Ubique"
- "The White Man's Burden"
- ".007"
- "The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly"
- "Baa Baa, Black Sheep"
- "Bread upon the Waters"
- "The Broken-Link Handicap"
- "The Butterfly that Stamped"
- "Consequences"
- "The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin"
- "Cupid's Arrows"
- "The Devil and the Deep Sea"
- "The Drums of the Fore and Aft"
- "Fairy-Kist"
- "False Dawn"
- "A Germ-Destroyer"
- "His Chance in Life"
- "His Wedded Wife"
- "In the House of Suddhoo"
- "Kidnapped"
- "Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris"
- "Lispeth"
- "The Man Who Would Be King"
- "A Matter of Fact"
- "Miss Youghal's Sais"
- "The Mother Hive"
- "The Other Man"
- "The Rescue of Pluffles"
- "The Ship that Found Herself"
- "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo"
- "The Taking of Lungtungpen"
- "Three and – an Extra"
- "The Three Musketeers"
- "Thrown Away"
- "Toomai of the Elephants"
- "Watches of the Night"
- "Wireless"
- "Yoked with an Unbeliever"
- Bibliography
- Bateman's (house)
- Indian Railway Library
- Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer
- Law of the jungle
- Aerial Board of Control
- My Boy Jack (1997 play)
- Rudyard Kipling: A Remembrance Tale (2006 documentary)
- My Boy Jack (2007 film)
- Caroline Starr Balestier Kipling (wife)
- Elsie Bambridge (daughter)
- John Kipling (son)
- John Lockwood Kipling (father)
- MacDonald sisters (mother's family)
- Stanley Baldwin (cousin)
- Georgiana Burne-Jones (aunt)
- Edward Burne-Jones (uncle)
- Philip Burne-Jones (cousin)
- Edward Poynter (uncle)
- Alfred Baldwin (uncle)