#bateman's

As the guide said when I went round Bateman's yesterday, you get here two houses for the price of one: a museum to Rudyard Kipling and his craft, and a Jacobean house, set in a perfect Sussex dell, which he filled with historic objects. The guide reckoned it was good enough land for the Romans to have been there. Kipling famously used the house and the surrounding area to inspire his historical stories in Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies, which I read as a teenager, which helped turn me into a historian.

I particularly admired this gold Cordoban leather wall decoration, which he seems to have pulled strings to acquire - there was another example at St Mary's, Bramber, which I visited today, unfortunately not photographable.

My new-cut ashlar takes the light

Where crimson-blank the windows flare

By my own work before the night, Great Overseer, I make my prayer.