Lamb House

Lamb House is an 18th-century house situated in Rye, East Sussex, England, and in the ownership of the National Trust.

The house is run as a writer's house museum. It was the home of Henry James from 1897 to 1916, and later of E.F. Benson.

Lamb House was built in 1722 by James Lamb, a wealthy wine merchant and local politician. In the winter of 1726 King George I took refuge at the house after his ship was washed ashore at nearby Camber Sands. James Lamb gave up his bedroom for the King, while Mrs Lamb gave birth to a baby boy during the night. The child was named George and the king consented to be the boy's godfather.

A detached Garden Room, with a large bay window overlooking the street, was built at right angles to the house in 1743, and originally served as a banqueting room. Both Henry James and E. F. Benson later used the Garden Room as a base for their writing during the summer months. The Garden Room was destroyed by a German bomb in 1940.

Benson wrote lovingly of both the garden and house, which he renamed "Mallards", in his popular Mapp and Lucia novels. Lamb House is the subject of Joan Aiken's supernatural book The Haunting of Lamb House (1993), comprising three novellas about residents of the house at different times, including James and Benson (both of whom also wrote ghost stories).

Other tenants have included, the novelist Rumer Godden, the author and academic A. C. Benson, the author and politician H. Montgomery Hyde, the publisher Sir Brian Batsford, politician William Mabane, 1st Baron Mabane, the literary agent Graham Watson and the writers John Senior and Sarah Philo.

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