Shaw's Corner
Shaw's Corner | |
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The front of Shaw's Corner. | |
Location | Ayot St Lawrence, near Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England, UK |
Built | Early 20th century |
Architect | Smee, Mence & Houchin |
Architectural style(s) | Arts and Crafts movement |
Governing body | National Trust |
Listed Building – Grade II* | |
Official name | Shaw's Corner |
Designated | 24 January 1967 |
Reference no. | 1348110 |
Shaw's Corner was the primary residence of the renowned Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw; it is now a National Trust property open to the public as a writer's house museum. Inside the house, the rooms remain much as Shaw left them, and the garden and Shaw's writing hut can also be visited. The house is an Edwardian Arts and Crafts-influenced structure situated in the small village of Ayot St Lawrence, in Hertfordshire, England. It is 6 miles from Welwyn Garden City and 5 miles from Harpenden.
Built as the new rectory for the village during 1902, the house was the home of playwright George Bernard Shaw from 1906 until his death in 1950. It was designed by a local firm of architects, Smee, Mence & Houchin, and local materials were used in its construction.[1] The Church of England decided that the house was too large for the size of the parish, and let it instead. Shaw and his wife Charlotte Payne-Townshend relocated in 1906, and eventually bought the house and its land in 1920, paying £6,220. At the same time the garden was extended and Shaw bought land from his friend Apsley Cherry-Garrard, bringing the total to 1.4 hectares (3.5 acres).
Shaw is known to have written many of his major works in a secluded, home-built revolving hut located at the bottom of his garden.[2] The tiny structure of only 64 square feet (5.9 m2), was built on a central steel-pole frame with a circular track so that it could be rotated on its axis to follow the arc of the Sun's light during the day.[2] Shaw dubbed the hut "London", so that unwanted visitors could be told he was away "visiting the capital".[3]
After Shaw's and his wife's deaths, their ashes were taken to Shaw's Corner, mixed and then scattered along footpaths and around the statue of Saint Joan in their garden.[4] In 1967 the house was designated a Grade II* listed building.[5]
Gallery
- Shaw's Corner from the garden
- Shaw's writing hut
- Shaw's study
- Another view of Shaw's study
- Garden
References
- ^ Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire - Shaw's Corner House of George Bernard Shaw The Astoft Collection of Buildings of England, 2006. Accessed 2012
- ^ a b Walker, Lester (2000). A Little House of My Own: 47 Grand Designs for 47 Tiny Houses. ISBN 1-57912-151-9.
- ^ "BBC". BBC News. 30 December 2005. Retrieved 14 May 2014.
- ^ Holyroyd, p. 515.
- ^ Historic England. "Shaw's Corner (Grade II*) (1348110)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 5 October 2022.
External links
- Shaw's Corner - official site at National Trust
- Collection of Shaw's Corner - the art and object collections of Shaw's Corner
- v
- t
- e
- Passion Play
- Un Petit Drame
- Widowers' Houses
- The Philanderer
- Mrs. Warren's Profession
- Arms and the Man
- Candida
- The Man of Destiny
- You Never Can Tell
- The Devil's Disciple
- The Gadfly
- Caesar and Cleopatra
- Captain Brassbound's Conversion
- The Admirable Bashville
- Man and Superman
- John Bull's Other Island
- How He Lied to Her Husband
- Major Barbara
- Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction
- The Doctor's Dilemma
- The Interlude at the Playhouse
- Getting Married
- The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet
- Press Cuttings
- The Fascinating Foundling
- The Glimpse of Reality
- Misalliance
- The Dark Lady of the Sonnets
- Fanny's First Play
- Androcles and the Lion
- Overruled
- Beauty's Duty
- Pygmalion
- Great Catherine
- The Music Cure
- O'Flaherty V.C.
- The Inca of Perusalem
- Augustus Does His Bit
- Macbeth Skit
- Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress
- Heartbreak House
- Back to Methuselah
- A Glimpse of the Domesticity of Franklyn Barnabas
- Jitta's Atonement
- Saint Joan
- The Apple Cart
- Too True to Be Good
- How These Doctors Love One Another!
- Village Wooing
- On the Rocks
- The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles
- The Six of Calais
- The Millionairess
- Arthur and the Acetone
- Cymbeline Refinished
- Geneva
- In Good King Charles's Golden Days
- The British Party System
- Buoyant Billions
- Farfetched Fables
- Shakes versus Shav
- Why She Would Not
- Immaturity
- Love Among the Artists
- Cashel Byron's Profession
- An Unsocial Socialist
- Charlotte Payne-Townshend (wife)
- Shaw's Corner
- Shaw Theatre
- Shavian alphabet
- Shaw Festival (production history)
- George Bernard Shaw: His Plays
- Great Contemporaries
- SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies
- Twain and Shaw Do Lunch
51°50′04″N 0°16′02″W / 51.83434°N 0.26709°W / 51.83434; -0.26709