The Eve of St Agnes (AW78)

This red brick Georgian townhouse, in Chichester’s Eastgate Square, once belonged to a Mr and Mrs Dilke, the elderly parents of Charles Dilke, a friend of the Romantic poet John Keats. Charles owned Wentworth Place in Hampstead where Keats lived.
In January 1819 Keats left London and travelled down to Chichester by coach to spend a few days with the Dilkes where he began The Eve of St Agnes, a poem with the feel of a medieval romance, much influenced by the picturesque surroundings of Chichester.
It proved to be the start of what one biographer described as Keats’s “Living Year” during which he composed so much of the glorious poetry for which he is best remembered.