We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea

Charming waterfront cottage in Suffolk riverside hamlet associated with sailing, smuggling, Arthur Ransome and ‘Lovejoy’ for sale

The sheltered anchorage of Pin Mill, on the southern banks of the tidal River Orwell, is somewhere that unsurprisingly has inspired artists and photographers and somewhere whose pub, The Butt & Oyster, has quenched the thirst of many a sailor also.

Tourists flock there to see the houseboats and wrecked vessels at this once busy landing point for ship-borne cargo and in the Second World War, it was also home to many landing craft used in the invasion of Normandy. Long associated with sailing and smuggling, Pin Mill has been home to Harry King & Sons boatyard and its 100 swinging moorings since 1898 and the acclaimed author Arthur Ransome had his largest yacht and its tender, the 35-foot long Selina King and 10-foot Swallow II, built there in 1938.

Despite offering Selina for service at Dunkirk in the war (she was rejected because of her small engine which was “only useful in calm”), Ransome’s association with the hamlet is definitely for what it is best known. It was here that he set We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea (1937) and it was here that he anchored his boats from 1937 to 1939. He had previously declined an offer to sail from there with the bibliographer Walter Ledger in 1911 after being told by Oscar Wilde’s friend Robbie Ross that “Ledger had episodes of homicidal mania.” Later, he commented: “[I] always regretted that I did not sail with him, for he kept his Blue Bird at Pin Mill, and, if I had gone, I should have known that charming anchorage twenty years earlier.”

The setting for several other novels and films, Pin Mill was a location in Lovejoy in 1993 and now an “idyllic” 17^th century waterfront cottage there has come up for sale there.

Offered at a price of £600,000 ($777,000, €695,000 or درهم2.9 million), 4 bedroomed Sam’s Cottage is being marketed by agents Jackson-Stops and extends to 1,521 square foot. It is described as “well laid out” and comes with a “pretty part-walled, lawned garden,” a rear courtyard and parking for three cars.

Pin Mill is 7 miles from Ipswich and trains from there to London Liverpool Street take just 70 minutes.

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