Tyger, tyger burning bright: William Blake’s cottage is for sale

William Blake’s cottage in Felpham, West Sussex in England, is for sale. The poet who wrote “The Tyger” and the collections “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience” lived in the brick and stone cottage from 1800-1803.

The house has been modernized since he moved. Its features include a blue plaque commemorating the famous poet’s time there, two floors, four bedrooms, exposed beams and brick, a glass-walled garden room, a home office, a garage, an enclosed garden and an outbuilding used as a summer house.

When Blake lived there, one friend arrived to discover the poet and his wife in that very summer house, nude. “Come in!” Blake cried. “It’s only Adam and Eve, you know!” Legend has it the couple were reading John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” to each other, in character.

Now thought of as one of England’s great poets, Blake’s writings -- sometimes sexual, other times spiritual verging on the apocalyptic -- were somewhat out of step with his time. He was a visual artist as well as a poet, whose engravings illustrated his own work as well as other’s.

For a time, Blake was happy in his Felpham cottage. “Sussex is certainly a happy place and Felpham in particular is the sweetest spot on earth,” he wrote to his friend Thomas Butts in 1801. The house retains the feel of that period.

The real estate agency Jackson-Stops writes, “The original part of the cottage has been altered little in its essential features. The rooms in which William Blake lived retain enormous character and the dining room was at this time the site of his printing press.”

The home is on what is now known as Blake’s Road; it hasn’t been on the market since 1928. It is listed for $978,00.
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