Enter The Private Lives Of Literary Legends

Click through to see Shakespeare's birthplace...

This restored 16th-century half-timbered house is where it's believed William Shakespeare was born in 1564 - and spent his childhood years. Records show that in 1552 his father, John Shakespeare, was fined for leaving a pile of muck outside his home in Henley Street, proving that he resided in a house there at the time, and it’s thought Shakespeare spent the first five years of married life in the house with his new wife, Anne Hathaway. Today, the Birthplace recreates a picture of family life at the time of Shakespeare, complete with period domestic furnishings, a glass window inscribed with the signatures of visitors to the house over the centuries, and John Shakespeare’s glove making workshop.

Click through to see the Brontë Museum...

Built in 1778-9, the Parsonage was the lifelong home of the Brontë family. Throughout the summer months, Anne and Emily would often sit writing in the Parsonage garden, but the dining room is where the three sisters did most of their work. Much of Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Charlotte's Jane Eyre were written in the room, as were much of Anne’s novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Set between the unique village of Haworth, and the wild moorland beyond, the museum has now been opening its doors to visitors for over 75 years and the homely Georgian house still retains the atmosphere of the Brontes' time, with its rooms filled with their furniture, clothes and personal possessions.

Photograph: The Brontë Society

Click through to see Samuel Taylor Coleridge's cottage...

Constructed in the 17th century as a building containing a parlour, kitchen and service room on the ground floor and three corresponding bed chambers above, this grade II listed building was home to Samuel Taylor Coleridge for three years, from 1797. During that time, Coleridge wrote his finest works, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Frost at Midnight, The Nightingale, Cristabel and This Lime Tree Bower my Prison. The rooms have now been recreated as though the Coleridge family had just walked out, with momentos on display, including Coleridge’s inkstand, locks of his hair and correspondence in his handwriting.

Photograph: National Trust Images, Andreas von Einsiedel.

Click through to see Keats's house...

Located in Hampstead, north London, Keats House is the spectacular setting that inspired some of the Romantic poet’s most memorable work. The grade I listed building was originally a pair of semi-detached houses known as ‘Wentworth Place’, and Keats lodged in one with his friend, Charles Brown, from December 1818 to September 1820. According to Brown, Ode to a Nightingale was written under a plum tree in the garden. It was during this time too that Keats fell in love with and became engaged to Fanny Brawne, who lived in the adjacent house, before he became increasingly ill with tuberculosis and was advised to move to a warmer climate. He left London in 1820 and died, unmarried, aged just 25, in Italy the following year. The building is now open to the public as a museum and literary centre.

Click through to see Virginia Woolf's house...

Monk's House at Rodmell in Sussex was the cherished home of Virginia Woolf and her husband, Leonard Woolf – and they received many important visitors there, including T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and Roger Fry. They bought the house in 1919 as a country retreat from London and for over two decades, the Sussex countryside inspired Woolf's writing. The solitude of village life allowed her respite from the tumult of London, and in the small wooden lodge at the bottom of the garden, many of her novels took shape, such as Jacob’s Room, Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse.

Photograph: The Lodge Writing Shed in the garden at Monk's House, National Trust Images.

Click through to see Wordsworth House...

This gorgeous Georgian townhouse in the Cumbrian town of Cockermouth was the birthplace and childhood home of romantic poet, William Wordsworth, and his sister Dorothy. Wordsworth and his four siblings lived very happily in Cockermouth, and William later wrote fondly of his time in the town, particularly of playing in the surrounding countryside. The garden at the back of the impressive building, with the River Derwent flowing past, was a place of magic and adventure for Wordsworth as a young boy. Now presented as their bustling family home and peopled by knowledgeable 21st-century guides, you can now smell, hear, touch - and even taste - what it was like to live in the 1770s.

Photograph: National Trust Images, Magnus Rew.

Click through to see Agatha Christie's house...

Nestled on the bank of the River Dart and surrounded by romantic woodland gardens, Agatha Christie described her holiday home as “the loveliest place in the world” – and elements of it were frequently used to create settings for her plots. Agatha and her family would spend summers and Christmases there with friends, relaxing by the river, playing croquet and clock golf, and reading her latest mystery to guests. The family were great collectors - and the house is now filled with archaeology, Tunbridgeware, silver, botanical china and books.

Photograph: National Trust Images, Nick Guttridge.

Click through to see Hardy's cottage...

It was in this small cob and thatch cottage built by his grandfather that Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 – and it’s little altered since the family left. Despite training as an architect, writing was Hardy’s first love, and from here, he wrote several of his early short stories, poetry and novels such as Under the Greenwood Tree and Far from the Madding Crowd. By the time of his death in 1928, he lived on the outskirts of Dorchester in a substantial house of his own design at Max Gate.

Photograph: National Trust Images, Andrew Butler.