As tenants of their friends Lord and Lady Throckmorton, of Weston Hall, the poet William Cowper and his long time companion, Mrs. Unwin, began life at Weston Lodge on November 15th, 1786. In fact the stone built dwelling still remains along the High Street, and, as made clear in his writings, William found the move an unnerving experience; ‘When God speaks to a chaos, it becomes a scene of order and harmony in a moment; but when his creatures have thrown one house into confusion by leaving it, and another by tumbling themselves and their goods into it, not less than many days labour and contrivance is necessary to give them their proper places.’ Yet William nevertheless found Weston Underwood an agreeable situation and here, as he confided in a letter to his cousin, Lady Hesketh, he would begin one of his most ambitious literary projects; ‘I am going to tell you a secret, a great secret, that you must not whisper even to your cat. I am making a new translation of Homer.’ Having found ‘not the least portion of Homer’s spirit, nor the least resemblance of his manner’ in an earlier translation by Alexander Pope, William duly began his task, and thereon his attention would be occupied for four years. Assisted in the copying out by ‘Lady Frog’, as he affectionately termed Lady Throckmorton, as well as by her chaplain, Dr. Gregson, his eventual achievements met with widespread acclaim, and it was perhaps with a quiet pride that in the garden of his Weston Underwood home he placed a bust of Homer, which a friend had presented to him.
Finding inspiration in the surrounding countryside, William would often indulge in rural walks, and it was within the tranquil embrace of the ‘Alcove’ that he sometimes retired to write. Of hexagonal shape, with three sides open, in 1753 this had been built by John Higgins as a woodland summerhouse for Sir Robert Throckmorton, and, enhanced by views across an extensive sweep of ground, laid out by the renowned ‘Capability Brown’, it was therefore of little surprise that his poetic abilities were greatly stimulated by the situation. Thus he would be understandably saddened to leave such a peaceful retreat as Weston Underwood. Yet this became an eventuality much hastened in 1792, when Mrs. Unwin suffered a severe stroke. Nevertheless, in his writings William appeared philosophical about such inevitabilities, for ‘We have reached a time of life when heavy blows, if not fatal, are at least long felt.’ Despite her gradual recovery it was decided that a new location for Mrs. Unwin should be sought, and in the summer of 1795 preparations were made for the couple to move to the more beneficial climes of coastal Norfolk. As for William’s opinion of the move, before their final leave he would pen his sentiments in poignant verse on the shutter of his bedroom; ‘Farewell, dear scenes, forever closed to me; Oh, for what sorrows must I now exchange ye!’ With the house being later unoccupied the lines were protected by the closed shutter which, in 1907, was then presented to the Cowper and Newton Museum of Olney.