Kelmscott Manor.
"Kelmscott Manor House, an early Stuart dwelling on the Thames, near Lechdale, and thirty miles from Oxford. It is the home with which Morris is most closely associated by the world at large. He described it himself after the first sight: " A heaven on earth, an old stone Elizabethan house like Water Eaton, and such a garden ! close down on the river, a boat house and all things handy." When he had to describe it again, in a magazine article written during his last year of life, he wrote thus : "A house that I love ; with a reasonable love I think : for though my words may give you no idea of any special charm about it, yet I assure you that the charm is there ; so much has the old house grown up out of the soil and the lives of those that lived on it, some thin thread of tradition, a half anxious sense of the de- light of meadow and acre and wood and river ; a certain amount (not too much let us hope) of common sense, a liking for making materials serve one's turn, and perhaps at bottom some grain of sentiment : — this I think was what went to the making of the old house.""
Extract from "William Morris, his homes and haunts" (Archive)
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