Houses in books....where do you want to live ?

[Antiqueanniesmagiclanternshow]

Just reading the thread about homes and somebody mentioned no food smells in the kitchen.
This made me think of Penelope Keeling's house in The Shellseekers.
She has a huge basement kitchen with French doors into the garden, there is a scrubbed pine table with a jug of flowers on it and a delicious smell of garlic and herbs. She has shelves full of books and lots of records and silk indian throws on the sofa and omg! I want to live there!

Which fictional house do you want to live in?

@Antiqueanniesmagiclanternshow Beckfoot is the house Nancy and Peggy Blacket live in, in the Swallows and Amazon's books. As it says it's at the foot of a beck on the edge of the lake with its own boathouse. Like @CaptainNancy I would love to live there. I'd also like to live in The Folly and learn magic too!

The farm house in the ocean at the end of the lane.
Pools of golden light though the windows landing on massive bunches of daffs. The full moon always shining through the hall window at night. Delicious meals from the kitchen.

@Antiqueanniesmagiclanternshow

Tell me about Beckfoot...not familiar with that?..

It's Swallows & Amazons

My choice; Sherlock Holmes' rooms in Baker Street, with Mrs Hudson to look after me.
The house in Ireland of the Resident Magistrate, and wonderful staff led be Mrs Caydogawn. Not forgetting the awful Slipper.
They would be contemporaneous So both could fit.

You are only allowed Beckfoot in return for hosting regular visits from the Great Aunt, and no you can’t go off and live in the Dog’s Home for the duration 😉

I know it would be really, really uncomfortable and completely inconvenient, but I have always wanted to live in The Little House in the Big Woods like Laura Ingalls and her family.

I would like Bracken Hall, after Sebastian has bought it back and taken away all the vulgar carpets.

And for my London pad, Aunt Irma’s wonderful flat with the service elevator to the restaurant.

You can all share Trennels as I will be living in the Merricks’ house with the ponies and the hawks.

110 Piccadilly (with Bunter). Not Tallboys. Possibly one of the new dons’ sets in Shrewsbury College.

Captain Flint’s houseboat.

Aziraphale’s bookshop.

Green Gables hands down

The Priory in Rivals - not so grand as Penscombe. Alternatively Magpie Cottage from TMWMHJ. But tidier.

Big House in Little Woods. As long as the molasses/tree sugar making thingy can occur and the bears stay out of the barn. I always felt Ma was shortchanged a bit having to leave that house and her family.
The House in Elizabeth Goudge's Little White Horse.
The Guernsey Houses described in the Chalet School series and the fabulous spin offs.
Freudesheim although the place sounds elastic to accommodate all those kids.

Would love Asthall as a long time Mitford fanatic.
Also Little Grey Rabbit’s Cottage
Green Knowe
The manor ( name forgotten) from The lost art of keeping secrets.
Getting greedy now, better stop!

A wonderful thread. Love it.

Most definitely Manderlay. Before the fire and I would have to give old Danvers her marching orders.

Definitely a night or two in all of the homes featured in the Wind and the Willows including Toad Hall!

The Tel Aviv apartment from Linda Grant's 'When I lived in modern times' - obviously during more peaceful times.

Rachel Ashwell's shabby chic LA home and also her daughter's home which might be in Venice beach.

From TV and film
It would be a Spanish style home in LA,
a month in an air b+b in Stars Hollow,
the Brentwood, California home of a youtuber,
Carrie's apartment from SATC
A good six to 12 months in the house from Heart 2 Heart before returning to the UK and moving into the gorgeous Cornish house in the film About Time.

Didn't have to think too hard about this list at all, I am always falling in love with houses!

Lovely thread, it's made me really happy reading through it and then writing my list, thanks OP!

Smugglers top as Green Knowe seems quite full 😊

By the sound of it, a lot of us are fighting over Trennels, so we'd need it as overflow. We could also turn insufferable Peter's Shippen into extra accommodation. I've a feeling that as cowsheds go, this is probably more like a cathedral.

We could also bag Mariot Chase with its ballroom and chapel. Anthony Merrick can stay, and their housekeeper because she makes great scones and kedgeree, but Mrs Merrick and Patrick are out.

Brideshead Castle - I would totally convert to Catholicism for that gorgeous gaff.
Or Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane. A lovely big central London place would be great.

What is so interesting to me is that we fell in love with many of these houses when we were children or teenagers. Is it that we immerse ourselves so much more when young? Each name that has come up brings with it an elaborate image that I seem to have known all my life,Little house in the big woods, green gables, manderlay , Green Knowe ,Milly Molly
mandy's house etc etc

I've always imagined Howards End to have been designed by Lutyens and with a Gertrude Jekyll garden.

I definitely think reading is a more immersive and transporting experience when you're a child. Plus the way children can fixate on things, like a particular book or series, and read it over and over so that a place or character in a favourite book can be as familiar to them as someone in real life. That was certainly the case for me at least.

Green Knowe,
Misselthwaite Manor from The Secret Garden,
Moominhouse,
Trennels,
Manderley,
Mantlemass from The Sprig of Broom series by Barbara Willard,
Moonacre Manor from The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge,
Chrestomanci Castle from Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones,
The House of Many Ways from the novel of the same name by Diana Wynne Jones
Melstone House from Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones.

@Pogostemon I was just thinking the same! If you've claimed the house, may I have the lodge? We can have swimming parties at the lake with sausages and gin fizzy lemonade (for which I shall wear Rhapsody in Stripes)

Jill's cottage in the Jill books and Valhalla in The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous!

@Arbadacarba

By the sound of it, a lot of us are fighting over Trennels, so we'd need it as overflow. We could also turn insufferable Peter's Shippen into extra accommodation. I've a feeling that as cowsheds go, this is probably more like a cathedral.

We could also bag Mariot Chase with its ballroom and chapel. Anthony Merrick can stay, and their housekeeper because she makes great scones and kedgeree, but Mrs Merrick and Patrick are out.

Supposing you had to marry the gruesome Giles to bag Trennels? Or indeed the diresome young fogey Patrick to bag Mariot Chase?

Brideshead Castle - I would totally convert to Catholicism for that gorgeous gaff.

That's nothing! I want to live in Brambley Hedge, and I am totally willing to become a mouse to do so.

Kirrin cottage.