A Visit To Keats House In Hampstead

I recently paid a visit to somewhere I have walked past many many times: Keats House in Hampstead. 

This lovely Regency building, near the Heath, on Keats Grove, is a significant location in English literary history as the place where the Romantic poet, John Keats, lived from 1818-1820. It is where he found inspiration, fell in love, found out he was dying and wrote some of his most enduring works. 

The House

The building, originally called Wentworth Place, was built between 1814-1816 and was, at first, split into two residences. 

In one half lived Charles Wentworth Dilke and in the smaller, eastern half, a man called Charles Brown. 

Keats lived in Brown’s section for 17 months from 1818-1820.

In 1838 the house was turned into one property and, when threatened with demolition in 1920, was bought via fundraising efforts and opened as a museum in 1925 to Keats’ life and times. 

John Keats

John Keats was born in 1795 on Moorgate in London. His father died when he was just 8 and his mother when he was 14. He left school after his mother died and started an apprenticeship with the family doctor. 

He then registered as a medical student at Guy’s Hospital. There is a bronze statue to him in the grounds of the hospital today.

He had always loved writing though and in 1816 he left the medical profession to focus on his poetry.

Moving into Wentworth Place

In 1817, Keats moved in with his brothers at 1 Well Walk in Hampstead. He spent much of his time there nursing his younger brother Tom through the final terminal stages of tuberculosis. 

After Tom died in December 1818, Charles Brown, Keats’ friend, invited Keats to come and live with him in Wentworth Place in exchange for £5 a month and half the liquor bill. 

He rented the small front parlour and a bedroom and it was here he wrote some of his most famous works: Ode to Psyche, Ode on Melancholy and Ode To A Nightingale, which was written, according to Brown, under a plum tree in the gardens. 

In just over a year, at Wentworth Place, he created some of the country’s most wonderful and enduring poetry. Today he is considered one of the great poets of the English Romantic movement along with Byron and Shelley.

Falling In Love With Fanny Brawne

In April 1819 the widowed Mrs Brawne and her 18 year old daughter Frances (Fanny) moved into the other half of Wentworth Place. 

Keats had become familiar with the Brawnes towards the end of 1818 and pretty quickly became besotted with Fanny. 

He would often see her in the gardens, they would read together and he gave her his sonnet ‘Bright Star’, possibly written or, at least, amended for her.

He spent a few months away that summer and sent her many letters, professing his love for her. 

In one of his letters for example he wrote: ‘My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again – my Life seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb’d me.’ 

In October 1819 Keats proposed to Fanny, here at Wentworth Place, but as he was not wealthy enough to marry, it was kept secret from her mother. You can see the ring he gave her in the house today. 

The End

One evening in February 1820, when he was 24 years old, Keats returned to Hampstead from London on a coach. He had forgotten his coat and chose to sit on top of the coach to save money. 

He returned home to Hampstead with a terrible fever and by the time he got back to Wentworth Place he was coughing up blood. After two lung haemorrhages he realised that he had consumption (tuberculosis), possibly passed on from his brother. 

His friends raised money to send him to Rome for the warmer climate. Keats could only think of Fanny, writing ‘I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy, the fact is I cannot leave without you’. 

On the 13th September 1820, Fanny wrote, rather unemotionally, in her diary ‘Mr Keats left Hampstead’. 

John Keats died in Rome on the 23rd February 1821, tragically young, at the age of just 25.

He had published just three books of poetry, not particularly well known outside a small circle. John Keats died not knowing that over the following decades, due to the efforts of his friends and fellow poets he would be acknowledged rightfully in his place as one of the greatest poets the country has ever produced.

Visiting Keats House

Keats House is open for visitors Wednesday-Friday and Sundays 11am-1pm and 2-5pm.

Tickets cost £8.40 per ticket but if you are 18 or under it is free and £2.35 for residents of the Borough of Camden.

Find out more about visiting here.