Queer Heritage · Millthorpe, Derbyshire
Millthorpe (Edward Carpenter & George Merrill)
The market-garden home where the socialist philosopher Edward Carpenter lived openly with George Merrill decades before decriminalisation — sandal-making, vegetarianism and 'the intermediate sex' in the Derbyshire hills. A touch on the backside from Merrill, E.M. Forster said, conceived 'Maurice' on the spot.
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For some 25 years the celebrity duchess Georgiana shared her marriage and her home with her husband and her best friend Bess Foster in the most famous ménage à trois of the age; Georgiana's own affair with the future PM Charles Grey produced a secret daughter.
Documented historyLiterary PassionRenishaw Hall (model for Wragby Hall)Renishaw, Derbyshire · EnglandThe Sitwells' Derbyshire seat is widely credited as the model for Wragby Hall in D.H. Lawrence's once-banned 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', the century's most notorious tale of a lady and her gamekeeper
Fact & fictionLiterary PassionTeversal (fictional Tevershall)Teversal, Nottinghamshire · EnglandLawrence, raised nearby, based the fictional colliery village Tevershall on Teversal; the surrounding woods stand in for the setting of the novel's al fresco trysts. Teversal Manor has been marketed on its 'racy reputation'.
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