Lemmons

Not to be confused with Lemons.

Lemmons
July 2015
Map
Alternative namesGladsmuir, Gladsmuir House
General information
StatusGrade II listed building[1]
TypeResidential house
Architectural styleGeorgian
LocationHadley Common, Monken Hadley, London Borough of Barnet, EN5
CountryEngland
Coordinates51°39′37″N 0°11′32″W / 51.6603°N 0.1922°W / 51.6603; -0.1922
Construction startedc. 1830
Technical details
Floor countTwo storeys
GroundsOver eight acres
Other information
Number of roomsOver 20
ParkingGravel drive

Lemmons, also known as Gladsmuir and Gladsmuir House, was the home of novelists Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) and Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923–2014) on the south side of Hadley Common, Barnet, on the border of north London and Hertfordshire.[2]

The couple bought the Georgian five-bay villa, built around 1830,[a] for £48,000 at auction in 1968, along with its eight acres of land, and lived there until 1976. The house had been registered as a Grade  II listed building in 1949 under the name Gladsmuir, previously known as Gladsmuir House.[4] Jane Howard restored an earlier name, Lemmons; the next owners changed it back to Gladsmuir.[5]

Jane and Kingsley lived at Lemmons with Jane's mother and brother, two artist friends, and Kingsley's three children, including the novelist Martin Amis. Several of the family's novels were written at Lemmons: Kingsley's The Green Man (1969) and The Alteration (1976); Jane's Odd Girl Out (1972) and Mr. Wrong (1975); and Martin's The Rachel Papers (1973) and Dead Babies (1975).[6]

The poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis stayed at Lemmons in the spring of 1972, when he was dying of cancer, accompanied by his wife, Jill Balcon, and their children, Daniel Day-Lewis and Tamasin Day-Lewis.[7] He wrote his last poem in the house, "At Lemmons", and died there shortly afterwards.[8][9] Ian Sansom writes that, for the brief period that the Amises, Howards, Day-Lewises and others were in residence, Lemmons became "the most brilliantly creative household in Britain".[7]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference listed was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Keulks, Gavin (2003). Father and Son: Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, and the British Novel Since 1950. University of Wisconsin Press, p. 135.
  3. ^ Cherry, Bridget; Pevsner, Nikolas (1998). The Buildings of England. London 4: North. Yale University Press, p. 186.
  4. ^ Leader Zachary (2006). The Life of Kingsley Amis. Jonathan Cape, pp. 607, 617.
  5. ^ Howard, Elizabeth Jane (2011) [2002]. Slipstream. Pan Macmillan, p. 374. For the change back to Gladsmuir, see Norrie, Ian (1993). Barnet in old photographs. A. Sutton, p. 113.
  6. ^ Leader 2006, pp. 614, 633, 645.
  7. ^ a b Sansom, Ian (3 April 2010). "Great dynasties of the world: The Day-Lewises". The Guardian.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference poem was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Stanford, Peter (2007). C Day-Lewis: A Life. Bloomsbury Publishing, p. 318.


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