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Milton's Cottage, Buckinghamshire

 

The house now known as Milton's Cottage served as a refuge for the poet John Milton during the Great Plague which hit London in 1665. One of the biggest burial pits in London was at Bunhill Fields, near Milton's house in Artillery Walk. Daniel Defoe wrote that into this pit people who "were infected and near their end, and delirious also, would run... and throw themselves." Not surprisingly Milton left London and took refuge in the pretty little village of Chalfont St Giles near High Wycombe, living in the house now known as Milton's Cottage for about eight or nine months. In Milton's time it is thought to have had three sitting rooms, a kitchen, and five small bedrooms. There was, and is, a garden where Milton would sit in the sunshine. He was in the final stages of work on Paradise Lost at this time, a book he had worked on since about 1658. The cottage now houses a library of rare editions of Milton's works.

Perhaps the following lines from Book Nine of Paradise Lost , describing Satan seeing Eden for the first time, were inspired by Chalfont St Giles....

 

Much he the place admired, the person more

As one long in populous city pent,

Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,

Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe

Among the pleasant villages and farms

Adjoined from each they met conceives delight

The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,

Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound (Book Nine: 444 - 451)

 

Milton Dictates To His Daughters - painting by Eugene Delacroix

Opening Times: Milton's Cottage is open Tuesday to Sunday from the 1st March to 31st October, 10am - 1pm and 2pm -6pm. Special openings on Mondays can be arranged for groups. The cottage opens on bank holiday Mondays. It is planned for 2008 to remain open for November.

Directions: To get to the cottage take the A413 to Chalfont St Giles and follow signs. The nearest train station is at Gerrards Cross, where buses run to Chalfont St Giles. Click here for an interactive road and satellite map centred on Chalfont St Giles.

Access: There is wheelchair access to all public areas of the cottage. Handling sessions for people with sight problems can also be arranged.

Contact:

e-mail: info@miltonscottage.org

web site:http://www.miltonscottage.org/

telephone: 01494 872313