Kelmscott Manor

Kelmscott Manor and its collection

The summer home of William Morris, Kelmscott Manor is a Grade I listed farmhouse, built around 1600 adjacent to the River Thames. William Morris chose it as his summer home, signing a joint lease with the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the summer of 1871. Morris loved the house as a work of true craftsmanship, totally unspoilt and unaltered, and in harmony with the village and the surrounding countryside. He considered it so natural in its setting as to be almost organic, it looked to him as if it had "grown up out of the soil". Its beautiful gardens, with barns, dovecote, a meadow and stream, provided a constant source of inspiration. The house - perhaps the most evocative of all the houses associated with Morris - contains an outstanding collection of the possessions and works of Morris, his family and his Arts & Crafts associates, including furniture, original textiles, pictures, carpets, ceramics and metalwork.