Fitzgerald's Retreat 2.37

The story of Fitzgerald’s Retreat has a few possible starting points…

An overcast day in 2015 when, intrigued by a ‘For Sale’ notice for a cottage in the converted stables of Woodstown, we turned the into the driveway of The Stables to the sight of the sun bursting through the trees of the driveway. It was a magical ‘wow’ moment for both my husband and I, and we would not have been surprised to see rabbits appearing from behind the trees and bluebirds weaving ribbons in our hair…

Summer childhoods in the 1980s spent with my mother at the peaceful beach, and she recounting stories of how Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and her children spent a summer at Woodstown House in 1967. It was a very private holiday, but the existing public images of the family’s visit is of Jackie on horseback, glamorous even in t-shirt and jeans, and in control of the reins and, I romantically imagined, her destiny. Fast forward fifty years and it does not take much effort to imagine Jackie’s horse retiring to 9 The Stables after a long summer’s day…

The 19th century stables of the Woodstown House were converted to cottages in the 1990s. Woodstown House itself was built in the 1720s.

Having since moved to London, then south to the coast of England, I thought I would never look back, except for family. However, I felt a strong connection to this place of calm, to an ancestral point in time I cannot fully trace or pinpoint. As my mother has passed on and the rest my family ages, I am glad to have formed this permanent bond and roots in the cottage…

It was not only Jacqueline Kennedy who found refuge in Woodstown. John Profumo fled to the home of his brother in Woodstown to escape the press when the famous ‘Profumo affair’ that bore his name broke the news. Nancy Sinatra is reported to have stayed in the area, but in the spirit of privacy, little record of her visit remains...