Kelmscott Manor

Kelmscott Manor stands beside the River Thames in the Cotswolds village of Kelmscott, Oxfordshire. The limestone house was built around 1570 and enlarged in the late 17th century. It was once called Lower House before James Turner bought the manor in 1864. William Morris lived there from 1871 until his death in 1896. The Society of Antiquaries of London now owns the Grade I-listed building.

Morris drew inspiration from the house’s craftsmanship and its garden. His novel News from Nowhere features the manor, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted his wife Jane there. After Morris died, his family kept the house until May Morris bequeathed it to Oxford University. The university passed it to the Society in 1962 after deciding not to preserve it as a museum. The manor reopened in 2022 following a £6 million restoration funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Visitors can walk through all three floors, including the attic spaces once used by farm labourers. Morris’s bedroom holds his books and a collection of Dürer prints. Other rooms display furniture from Red House and Kelmscott House, alongside works by Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Brueghel the Younger. The garden has old mulberry and fruit trees, a walled front garden with roses and a Grade II-listed summerhouse. The village churchyard contains Morris’s tomb designed by Philip Webb.