Kenneth Grahame’s house (author of Wind in the Willows)

Wind in the Willows author Kenneth Grahame (1859 - 1932) enjoyed wandering on The Ridgeway, often on his own or with ‘friends the hares and plovers’. For a time, he lived at Boham's House in Blewbury where a 'blue plaque' is displayed on a wall to be seen from the roadside.

The house is not open to the public.

In Romance of the Road, Grahame affectionately calls The Ridgeway ‘The Rudge’ and he imagined coming across people from the past along this historic routeway:

Join it at Streatley, the point where it crosses the Thames; at once it strikes you out and away from the habitable world in a splendid, purposeful manner, running along the highest ridge of the Downs a broad green ribbon of turf….. Out on that almost trackless expanse of billowy Downs such a track is in some sort humanly companionable: it really seems to lead you by the hand….. The ``Rudge'' is of course an exceptional instance….the Roman, sore beset, may have gazed down this very road for relief, praying for night or the succouring legion. This child that swings on a gate and peeps at you from under her sun-bonnet -- so may some girl-ancestress of hers have watched with beating heart the Wessex levies hurry along to clash with the heathen and break them on the down where the ash trees grew. And yonder, where the road swings round under gloomy overgrowth of drooping boughs -- is that gleam of water or glitter of lurking spears? …. A road of promises, of hinted surprises…

Discover more about Kenneth Grahame and Blewbury through the Ridgeway Top 50 Famous Writers and Wanderers and Wayfarers.