A poet’s home

ON January 21, 1884, the poet laureate Alfred Tennyson was elevated to the peerage as Baron of Aldworth, Surrey, and of Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. As the editor of The Complete Peerage (1896) primly commented when recording this exceptional accolade, ‘the assumption of two places in different counties (more especially when the estate possessed is inconsiderable), cannot be commended’. Tennyson, however, would not have cared. Indeed, he had refused the offer of baronetcy four times and was only finally persuaded to accept it by his friend, the then Prime Minister, William Gladstone.

Tennyson chose this unusual title because —unconventionally for the period—he had houses in both places that he considered to be homes. Aldworth, which he generally occupied in the summer months, was a retreat from his house at Freshwater. This latter building, known as Farringford, was sold by the family in the 1940s and thereafter became a hotel. Returned back into private ownership in 2007, it has now undergone a renaissance at the hands of a Tennyson scholar, who has turned it into both a home and a house museum to the poet.