The Literature Network - A peerless prospect Sold off by the poet Shelley, later home to Oscar Wilde's young lover, this is a house with a noble past. Now its present owner, Lord Monk Bretton, is selling up, writes Ross Clark

A peerless prospect Sold off by the poet Shelley, later home to Oscar Wilde's young lover, this is a house with a noble past. Now its present owner, Lord Monk Bretton, is selling up, writes Ross Clark

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20040321
Author:Ross Clark

The brochure for Shelley's Folly, near Lewes in East Sussex, has much to say on the property's connection with the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Percy, we learn, could have inherited the house from his uncle, John Shelley, and might have spent long afternoons composing verse inspired by the sweeping backdrop of the South Downs. But in 1815 Shelley took the money and ran: finding himself short of cash, he renounced his interest in his uncle's estate in return for a lump sum of pounds 7,400, plus an annuity of pounds 1,000 a year.

There went the blue plaque. Never mind, there is one ...

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A peerless prospect Sold off by the poet Shelley, later home to Oscar Wilde's young lover, this is a house with a noble past. Now its present owner, Lord Monk Bretton, is selling up, writes Ross Clark

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