Barnhill, Jura


Barnhill is a farmhouse situated at in the north of the island of Jura in the Scottish Hebrides. It stands on the site of a larger 15th-century settlement called Cnoc an t-Sabhail; the English name Barnhill having been in use since the early twentieth century. The house was rented by the essayist and novelist George Orwell, who lived there intermittently from 1946 until January 1949; he completed the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four at Barnhill.
According to a BBC report, he was spending months on the island "to escape the daily grind of journalism and to find a clean environment which doctors thought would help him recover from a dangerous bout of tuberculosis". Orwell left Jura in January 1949 to get treatment at a sanatorium at Cranham, Gloucestershire and never returned to the island.

After 1950

Since Orwell's death in 1950, Barnhill has been a site of interest for many who are familiar with the life and writing of George Orwell. The cottage is still owned by the family that rented it to Orwell. The four-bedroom house is today available to rent in virtually the same condition it was in as the author worked on Nineteen Eighty-Four: a generator supplies electricity, the small refrigerator is gas-powered and heat is provided by a coal-fired Rayburn. "If you stay here, you’re really treading in Orwell’s footsteps. He would recognise the place instantly if he were to step through the door today," Society member Damaris Fletcher told The Guardian.

History

The name "Barnhill" means "Hill of the barn".

Citations