Help Bring William Blake's Cottage Back to Life

Heaven opens here on all sides her golden Gates, William Blake wrote from Felpham in 1800, describing the modest thatched cottage where he and his wife Catherine had just made their home. Over the next three years, in that small Sussex house, Blake wrote the words that became Jerusalem - now sung in cathedrals, at graduations, and by millions who have never set foot in England. His vision reshaped American culture too: it gave The Doors their name, it moved Allen Ginsberg to write Howl, and it echoes through generations of poets and songwriters who found in Blake a fellow traveler.

Blake's Cottage is the only home of the nine he and Catherine ever shared that can still become a public memorial. Catherine herself deserves equal billing in that memorial: she learned to read at William's side, hand-printed the plates of his illuminated books, mixed his inks, colored his prints, and kept his work alive for years after his death. She was not his assistant. She was his co-creator.

In 2024 this cottage was in crisis - its roof buckling, the building placed on Historic England's Heritage at Risk Register. Thanks to emergency support from donors like you, we saved it just in time. Master craftsmen have now installed new timbers and thatch, and a later Victorian addition has been removed, returning the cottage to the single-storey form William and Catherine would recognize. That work is done. What comes next is not.

We still need to restore the cottage's interior and garden and open them to the public, and build a new international centre for arts, education, and research. It will be the only place in the world dedicated to the lives, work, and legacy of William and Catherine Blake together. Our goal is to open the cottage doors in 2027, the bicentenary of Blake's death and later establish a creative center worthy of their memory.

We're not doing this alone. The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Historic England, and World Monuments Fund Britain have already backed this project. Now we need to finish the job - and that depends on private philanthropy, including from Americans who've carried Blake's words further than he ever imagined.

Every dollar you give goes directly toward the restoration of the cottage and garden and the center that will follow. Gifts from US donors can be made in a tax-efficient way, and every gift, at every level, moves us closer to our goals.

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. My business is to create.

Help us finish what William and Catherine Blake started.

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US donors can give tax-efficiently through the Chapel & York US Foundation.

Gifts of any size make a real difference.

Please donate today