Bateman's

Bateman's
General information
Architectural style	Jacobean
Town or city	Burwash, East Sussex
Country	England
Completed	1634
Owner	National Trust

Bateman's is a 17th-century house located in Burwash, East Sussex, England. Author Rudyard Kipling lived in Bateman's from 1902 to his death in 1936. His wife bequeathed the house to the National Trust on her death in 1939, and it has since been opened to the public.

Bateman's is a modest Jacobean Wealden sandstone mansion built in about 1634 probably for William Langham. It has been alleged that a later occupier, John Britten, was an ironmaster but there is no evidence to support this. Six brick columns form a massive central chimneystack above the gabled facades.

Today the rooms are left as they were when the Kipling family lived there. Kipling and his wife created interiors that complemented the 17th-century house. The heart of the house is the book-lined study, at the top of the stairs, where Kipling worked. He sat at a 17th-century walnut refectory table under the window and his writing tools, paperweight, and pipe are still there.

Bateman's also reflects Kipling's strong links with the Indian subcontinent. There are oriental rugs in many rooms and the parlour displays Kipling's collection of Indian works of art and artefacts. His bookplate shows a small figure reading on top of an elephant. Exhibition rooms contain manuscripts, letters, and mementoes of Kipling's life and work.

When Kipling first went to Bateman's on a house-hunting expedition in 1900 he fell in love with it at first sight. He purchased it in 1902, and made it his home, even paying for a new road to be built to the nearest main road. Kipling wrote some of his finest works here including: "If—", "The Glory of the Garden", and Puck of Pook's Hill, named after the hill visible from the house. The house's setting and the wider local area features in many of his stories in Puck of Pook's Hill (1906).

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