Swiss Cottage Greater London hotels:

The poet John Keats lived in this house from 1818 to 1820 and wrote some of his most moving and best loved poems here, including Ode to a Nightingale written under a plum tree in the garden. The Keats House Collection: The Keats House Collections consist of books, manuscripts, letters, prints, paintings and artefacts relating to the life of the poet John Keats (1795-1821), his circle and the English Romantic movement. Keats House is administered by London Metropolitan Archives and for access to the collections see London Metropolitan Archives. The house was originally built as a pair of semi-detached houses known as Wentworth Place. The two houses shared a garden, which retains much of the same layout as it did originally. Keats lodged in one house with his friend, Charles Armitage Brown. The two years Keats spent at the house were arguably his most productive as a poet, and perhaps this reflects the fact that while here, he met and fell in love with Fanny Brawne, the daughter of the family in the second house. They became engaged to marry, but the romance was cut tragically short. Keats, seriously weakened by tuberculosis, was advised to seek warmer climes, and left England for Italy in 1820. He was never to return, and died in Rome in 1821at the age of just 25. The two houses were converted into one in 1838-9. The exterior remains very much as it was in Keats' time, except for an added drawing room. The house remained as a private dwelling until, threatened with demolition to make way for a new development, it was saved by public subscription from Europe and America.