The lighthouse that inspired Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse is going under the hammer. According to the BBC, bidding will start at £50,000 ($80,446), and the price includes a 76-acre stretch of English beach that includes the island on which the building sits.
Although To The Lighthouse is set in the Hebrides, an archipelago off the coast of Scotland, it’s the octagonal white tower in Cornwall — where Woolf spent summers as a child — that’s widely believed to have inspired the novel. (For a cheat’s guide to the novel, click here.) She and her family lived in a guest house in Cornwall’s St. Ives, in England’s southwest, which had a view of the lighthouse. Called the Godrevy lighthouse, it has been in service since 1859. (Woolf spent summers in the 1880s and 1890s there.)
She wrote: “Probably nothing we had as children was quite so important to us as our summers in Cornwall … to hear the waves breaking … to dig in the sands; to scramble over the rocks and see the anemones flourishing their antennae in the pools.”
The historic lighthouse has been a source of tension for Woolf fans, preservationists, developers and city officials for years. Most recently, they fought over whether the light should go out. (After much pressure, the city agreed that it shouldn’t.)
Proceeds from the sale — which has attracted interest from around the world — will benefit Hall for Cornwall, a performing arts venue.
