Lord Tennyson

Alfred, first Baron Tennyson, poet, was born at Somersby rectory, Lincolnshire, on 6 August 1809. After a difficult childhood he entered Trinity College, Cambridge (1827) where he met Arthur Hallam, whose early death was to precipitate the reflective verse published as In Memoriam (1850.) In 1830 he met Emily Sellwood whom he eventually married in 1850 - the year in which he was made Poet Laureate.

A man of family warmth but reclusive temperament Tennyson moved to Farringford, Isle of Wight. However, lack of privacy following the success of In Memoriam, Idylls of the King, and Maud, impelled him to seek a summer home on Blackdown, Haslemere (1868.) At his newly-built house, Aldworth, he entertained such friends as Gladstone, Edward Lear and Benjamin Jowett.

Aldworth saw the final phase of his output including The Holy Grail and other Poems (1870). He accepted a Barony in 1883. In his later verse Tennyson responded to his magnificent surroundings - and it was at Aldworth that he died in October 1892 his hand on his beloved volume of Shakespeare.