Sterne's
Coxwold
Shandy Hall
Located in the picturesque little village of Coxwold, Yorkshire,
"Shandy Hall" (as Sterne called it in honor of his famous novel) is where he moved in 1760 and in the next seven years wrote the last seven volumes of Tristram Shandy. Locals testify that the site attracts many literary tourists, mostly American and Japanese. "Originally a fifteenth-century timber house of a type built by prosperous yeomen, it had probably been the house of a reeve to the abbots of Newburgh. It had undergone extensive changes in the seventeenth century: a floor had been inserted, dividing the open hall horizontally into a ground and upper storey, each partitioned into rooms and passageways. Chambers had been finished, gables cut in the roof, and a brick veneer laid over the timber walls. Sterne, with the help of Lord Fauconberg, would eventually make other changes--adding the boxlike extension to the west, refurbishing bedrooms, building a stable, coachhouse, and garden summerhouse. The end product of these alterations was a charming but odd house, its formal west end contrasting with the east end, dominated by a huge medieval chimney . . ." (from Laurence Sterne: The Later Years, Arthur H. Cash, 1986)
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Shrubbery covers the window of the room on the south side of the house where Sterne completed Tristram Shandy and wrote the first two volumes of Sentimental Journey, which he did not live to complete.
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Shandy Hall from the east, showing the "huge medieval chimney, which served a kitchen fireplace large enough to sit in. 'A delicious retreat' Sterne called it. The house was not legally a parsonage and did not belong to the church, but it had long been the traditional residence of the curates of Coxwold, who had rented it from Lord Fauconberg. Sterne paid £12 a year for his 'Philosophical hut'." (from The Later Years)
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The garden at Shandy Hall, where Sterne indulged his horticultural hobby.
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The church of St. Michaels in Coxwold, where Sterne was Vicar and where he was eventually buried two centuries after he died of tuberculosis. With a paternal great-grandfather who had been archbishop of York, he held such previous clerical positions as Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest and Canon of York Minster. Sterne wrote excellent sermons and on Sundays reportedly filled St. Michaels with eager listeners, although in his final years a weakened voice prevented him from taking the pulpit. He delivered his last sermon in York in 1766.
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The final resting place of Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) against the south wall of St. Michaels. He died in London and was originally interred at St. George's in Hanover Square, but his body was stolen and used in an anatomical lecture. It was recovered and returned to St. George's but in the mid-twentieth century was again threatened, this time by developers. Thus, in 1969, the Laurence Sterne trust transferred his remains along with the original headstone to St. Michaels.
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