Poet's birthplace goes on sale

The house is on the market for £680,000

The Worcestershire birthplace of a literary giant more commonly associated with Shropshire has gone on sale.

Poet and scholar AE Housman, best remembered for his work A Shropshire Lad, was born in the large country house near Bromsgrove in 1859.

The luxurious six-bedroom home is on the market for £680,000.

It is now hoped the money can be found to turn the property into a museum dedicated to the memory of the poet.

Housman was in fact a Worcestershire lad

The owner of the house, Beryl Bellingham, said it has been a beautiful place to live.

"There are such lovely views, it's such a peaceful, serene area, even in spite of the M5," she said.

"We've enjoyed it enormously - you get wonderful sunsets and sunrises around here.

"It's just a lovely place to be."

Permanent reminder

Aside from the blue plaque denoting the house as Housman's birthplace, there a few traces left of the poet's presence in the property.

His family moved when Housman was only a few months old and the poet's bedroom has since been converted into a bathroom.

Chairman of the Housman Society Jim Page said he fears it will not be possible to keep the house as a permanent reminder of the poet's life.

"It would be wonderful to have the house as a museum but, realistically, I cannot see it happening because someone's got to come up with a very large sum of money," he said.