Breach House

The Sons and Lovers cottage

Breach House is an end terrace consisting of three floors.  The ground floor is now a museum with some original features from when the Lawrence family lived there. The house is the setting for some scenes from Lawrence's breakthrough novel Sons and Lovers, in which it is called "The Bottoms".

"The Bottoms consisted of six blocks of miners' dwellings, two rows of three, like the dots on a blank-six domino, and twelve houses in a block. The houses themselves were substantial and very decent."

Lawrence also describes the house in his essay, 'Nottingham and the Mining Countryside'. 

"We lived in the Breach, in a corner house. A field path came down under a great hawthorn hedge. On the other side was the brook, with the old sheep-bridge going over onto the meadows. My father, who always worked at Brinsley pit and who always got up at five o'clock, if not at four, would set off in the dawn across the fields at Coney Grey and hunt for mushrooms in the long grass or perhaps pick up a skulking rabbit, which he would bring home at evening inside the lining of his pitcoat."

The landscape described still exists and it is possible to walk these same routes.  

Breach House is open from April to October on the first Saturday of every month 11am to 3pm. Planned open days for 2025 are as follows:

• April 5th
• May 3rd
• June 7th
• July 5th
• August 2nd
• September 6th

Look round this beautiful historic house with our knowledgeable guides. Browse the D.H. Lawrence society library, or sit and chat in the lovely garden. D.H. Lawrence books will be on sale too. All welcome, the Breach House is free to visit but donations towards its upkeep are welcome.  

More information on Breach House can be found here  https://www.dhlawrencesociety.com/the-breach-house (window opens in new tab)