Shepherd’s Cottage and Richard Adams
Returning in spring 2025, I noticed that something had changed in the vicinity of the Down’s northern escarpment but I couldn’t quite figure out what. It was only during the summer, when I was in conversation with another walker curious as to my camera and purpose, that I was asked, ‘What happened to Richard Adams’ house?’
As late autumn drew in at the end of 2024, the shortening daylight, rain and blustery wind meant that my visits to Watership Down became less frequent than I wished. Sometimes I would do no more than drive down the lane that cuts into the Down’s western slope before heading on north towards Burghclere.
Returning in spring 2025, I noticed that something had changed in the vicinity of the Down’s northern escarpment but I couldn’t quite figure out what. It was only during the summer, when I was in conversation with another walker curious as to my camera and purpose, that I was asked, ‘What happened to Richard Adams’ house?’
I explained that, as far as I aware, Adams’ former home in Whitchurch was still standing and very much lived in.
‘No, no,’ explained the walker, ‘the house at the bottom of the Down. Maybe I’m wrong, but it doesn’t look like it is there any more.’
Construction work on the new dwelling on the site of Shepherd’s Cottage, November 2025.
Then I realised what I had missed but been unable to recognise: Shepherd’s Cottage, the large red-brick cottage underneath the ridge between Watership Down and Hare Warren Down was no more.
I began a little research online discovered the cottage had been in a poor state of repair and was destined to be replaced with a modern, more energy efficient building. (As of November 2025, the new build is beginning to take shape.) Curiously though, as with the walker I had spoken to, one online source named Shepherd’s Cottage as Richard Adams’ former home during the writing of Watership Down. Later, in the summer, this same snippet of information would be repeated to me, albeit with Adams having moved to the cottage in the 1980s.
Image showing the former Shepherd’s Cottage in the foreground, with Fossicks Cottages behind. Photograph © Oswald Bertram (cc-by-sa/2.0)
So, is there any truth to these claims? The Independent reports that Adams lived in Islington, London, at the time he conceived Watership Down, whilst working as a civil servant. Meanwhile, the Isle of Man Nature Journal features an article recalling Adams’ time living on the isle at some point in the first half of the 1980s. Of course, this doesn’t cover all of the different places where Adams may have lived. Perhaps he did reside on the cottage under the Down for a short period?
Well, no. This is what Adams’ Estate, Watership Down Enterprises, have confirmed to me via their literary agent KT Forster. They should know. It would seem that the link between Shepherd’s Cottage and Richard Adams is merely apocryphal. As to how this story came into being, I have no knowledge. Perhaps there was some confusion with the fact that Adams spent much of his childhood not too far away in Wash Common, near Newbury, and his later life just a few miles away in Whitchurch. Besides, who wouldn’t want to live in such a beautiful location and see the Down from their window each and every day?
If you want to see more images of the cottage click here to view the supporting documents accompanying the demolition (and replacement building) planning application.