A Cambridgeshire cottage that was once home to a Cold War poet, five miles from 'the home of horse racing'
Edwin Muir spent the last three years of his life at Priory Cottage in Swaffham Prior
The Cambridgeshire cottage that was once home to the Scottish poet and critic Edwin Muir has come to the market with Cheffins.
Born on a farm in the Orkney Islands in 1887, Muir married Willa Anderson in 1919 and the couple spent a few years living in Prague, then in Czechoslovakia, Dresden in Germany and Salzburg and Vienna in Austria. Together, they worked on influential translations of German-language writers and were the first to translate works by Franz Kafka into English.
Priory Cottage, in Swaffham Prior, was Muir’s home for the last three years of his life and it was where he wrote some of his best-known Cold War-based poems. He died in 1959.
His wife wrote about finding the cottage in her book, Belonging: ‘Most old English cottages are cursed with very small rooms and as soon as we walked into [the sitting room], we nodded to each other and said: “This is it.”’
The new owners of the cottage will no doubt want to stamp their own decorative mark on the property — and it is ripe for modernisation (see: the avocado bathroom suite).
It has four bedrooms (one on the ground floor), an established walled garden, a garage and off-street parking and 'numerous character features'. These include original windows, such as in the dual-aspect dining room, a 'stunning' inglenook fireplace with herringbone brickwork hearth and wood-burning stove, exposed walls and timber ceilings.
Swaffham Prior in Cambridgeshire is famous for having two historic churches — St Mary’s and St Cyriac’s — situated side-by-side in the same churchyard on the High Street. They exist together due to the medieval division of the village into two separate lordships.
Despite its size, there is also ample space in which to put things: a cellar; a study with built-in storage; and a kitchen that is charmingly outdated, but does come with plenty of cupboards.
Situated in the heart of the village, overlooking its two churches, Priory Cottage is a mere five minutes from Newmarket — the 'home of horse racing'.
Priory Cottage is on the market for £680,000 through Cheffins — see more details.
