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Lord Mayor Ian Luder, right, cutting the ribbon with Keats House committee chairman Michael Wellbank |
A thing of beauty - Keats House reopened to the public after £1m restoration
CHAMPAGNE corks popped in Hampstead on Monday in honour of John Keats when Lord Mayor of London Ian Luder reopened the house in Keats Grove where the poet lived for just two fateful years, writes Gerald Isaaman.
He cut a silver ribbon laid across the front steps to signify the end of a two-year restoration of the Regency property that has cost almost £1million.
The house is where Keats lived between 1818 and 1820, two of the most creative years of his life. It is where he met and fell in love with Fanny Brawne but also where he wrote some of his finest poetry, the Ode to the Nightingale in particular. It was the house where he first coughed blood and knew he was doomed to die from tuberculosis, as he did in Rome, aged 25.
The Lord Mayor thanked the Heritage Lottery Fund for its £420,000 grant towards the restoration costs and Hampstead architect Michael Wellbank, chairman of the Keats House Management Committee, who organised the project.
The house is to become a poetry centre. “We’re having a poet in residence, we’re having seminars, lectures and an outreach programme to schools,” Mr Wellbank said. |
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