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Queer Heritage · Keswick (Catbells/Derwentwater), Cumbria (Cumberland)

Hugh Walpole's Brackenburn — Queer Lakeland

A best-selling novelist and the married former policeman who became his chauffeur, secretary and constant companion lived a discreet seventeen-year partnership in a house above Derwentwater.

StatusDocumented history
Date1924–1941
The peopleSir Hugh Walpole (1884–1941), Harold Cheevers
The siteBrackenburn, on the slopes of Catbells above Derwentwater (Walpole's home 1924–1941); grave at St John's churchyard, Keswick
Coordinates54.56900, -3.15900 (confidence 3/5)

Evidence note. Handled as documented queer heritage: the relationship is recorded by his biographer and modern LGBTQ heritage projects; no unproven claims.

The story

Sir Hugh Walpole was one of the best-selling novelists of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1923 he bought Brackenburn, on the slopes of Catbells above Derwentwater, and called it his little paradise on the fells. He filled it with some 15,000 books and wrote his Herries novels there, the great saga set in the Borrowdale landscape across the lake.

At the end of 1924 he met Harold Cheevers, a married ex-policeman who became his chauffeur, secretary and lifelong companion — the "perfect friend" Walpole had spent his life seeking. They were inseparable for seventeen years, and utterly discreet, because openness would have cost Walpole his knighthood and his public. He left Cheevers the house. When Walpole died at Brackenburn in 1941, his obituary called him a bachelor and named his brother and sister; Cheevers went unmentioned. Walpole is buried at St John's, Keswick, above the lake he loved.

More stories at this spot

The revolver champion

Harold Cheevers was no ordinary chauffeur. Before he entered Walpole's service he had been revolver champion of the British Isles, a Metropolitan policeman with a wife and two children. Walpole placed him at the very top of what he called his "First Fifteen" of friends — and, in the end, left him Brackenburn.

Sources

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