Childhood home of celebrated Peterborough author which ‘would haunt and repel him all his life’ on market for £1.85m
The lavish home of a celebrated Peterborough author who penned his first novel while growing up under its roof is on the market for a eye-watering £1.85 million.
L.P. Hartley, who wrote the famous novel The Go-Between, grew up and was home schooled at Fletton Tower in Queens Walk.
The novelist and short story writer was born in Whittlesey in 1895 but spent his childhood at the listed Victorian setting until he was 13, during which time he even penned his first story - a fairytale - aged 11.
The seven bedroom property is now up for sale complete with 3.5 acres of garden (including a large vegetable patch and spacious greenhouses), outbuildings (including a two storey stable block and a small outdoor workshop) and large triple garage.
And any buyer will hopefully enjoy the surroundings more than Leslie Poles Hartley ever did, with the author writing in later years about his hatred of the place.
According to local historian Claire Richardson he wrote to his close friend Lord David Cecil (from Hatfield House) that his father Harry was “severe,” adding: “I always felt at Fletton I had done something wrong, particularly in the north wing.”
Harry, according to Claire, was a solicitor who was in charge of a brick pit in Whittlesey, helping the Hartley family establish its wealth and leave the middle classes behind.
Harry is first mentioned in local newspapers in 1889, but more because of his golf game than anything else.
While at Fletton Tower the family kept Deerhounds in the garden, but for young Leslie his home became a place he looked back on with little fondness.
In a re-printed version of The Go-Between in 2002, Colm Tóibín wrote in an introduction to the book that Hartley’s home would “haunt and repel him the whole of his life”.
The book, originally published in 1953, contains the famous line: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
The plot revolves around a 12-year-old boy who acts as a go-between for a love affair with tragic consequences, with sections on class and the protagonist’s feelings of inferiority believed to be, at least in part, autobiographical.
The novelist was inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe while living at Fletton Tower, before he finally tasted education in the outside world at Harrow and the University of Oxford.
Fletton Tower was originally built between 1841 and 1847 for W Lawrence Clark of the Peace for the Liberty of Peterborough, according to Historic England. And in recent years it has been re-roofed, electrically re-wired and re-plumbed.
Among its features are stained glass windows, a cantilever staircase and painted ceiling, which has been carefully restored.
The dining room contains an original fireplace, while the property also features vaulted ceilings with glazed skylights, underfloor heating, an original servants hatch, walk in pantry, Victorian snug room, play room, drawing room and snooker room, as well as a large basement and wine cellar.
Anyone wanting to learn more about L.P. Hartley can read about him in the archive section at Central Library in Broadway.
Anyone interested in buying Fletton Tower should visit https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-75157792.html or call Savills in Stamford on 01780 695032.