The Places We Love To Live

So I was wondering why it is that by and large most authors want to live in old houses. I personally would love to live in something gothic. The Addams family estate, perhaps.
My last home was an almost 300 year old farmhouse. It looked like this:
tinkerhouse
It pre-dated the American Revolution by 3 years and I loved it very much. We used to joke that the downstairs bedroom (my study) had a ghost because it was always about ten degrees colder in that room. Actually it wasn’t that funny.
The houses we’re looking at now are all of a certain age and resemble these fine estates:
gothic house 1
House03 - House Closeup
s house

Or this lovely English brick establishment which I believe belonged to some writer called J. Austen.
Scottish Castlescottish castle 2
Or these, although I’ve heard they can be awfully drafty.
My aunt lives in a 3 hundred year old sheepman’s cottage perched on a hill in Wales. My godmother lives in one of the few thatched cottages left in Oxfordshire. My grandmother resides in a historical landmark in the Cotswolds and had to get a royal dispensation(or something) to add a sunroom. I grew up in a three story Victorian brick house and feel that a house is not a true house without an attic and perhaps a cellar.
I wonder if the age and history inspire our imaginations. If the stones or timbers hold so much of human life and death that it seeps out and into our brains. Maybe I am just a romantic.
Every writer I know lives in an old home. None of them live in something like this, although I can see the appeal if you’re twenty years old and like to shoot at tin cans and write on a manual typewriter:
trailer home
Although I am quite willing to live here
AirstreamTrailer1
Or here
tree house 2
if pushed.
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4 thoughts on “The Places We Love To Live

  1. Although a nice modern house will need less work doing on it, giving you more time to write. Although I speak as someone who lives in a converted stone cider house deep in the wilds of Herefordshire …

  2. See what I mean Simon! A converted cider house! You are such a writer person!
    We need those ancient timbers, that mold, the mildew, the rot to stimulate our imaginations.

  3. I would love to live in a 300 year old house as long as I didn’t have to repair a single thing, and the central A/C and baseboard heat worked flawlessly!!!

    Hey – you’ve won a blog award! (Details on my blog)

  4. Jay, aye there’s the rub! Our farmhouse had both heat and A/C and low ceilings and huge pitted ceiling beams and a clawfoot tub- the best of all worlds. Actually the old part of the house was better constructed than the newer bits.
    Thanks so much for the award. I hate to mention it but Simon Kewin gave me the very same award last month. I really do appreciate it though!

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