Judith is now a docent at the visitor’s centre and couldn’t have been kinder or more welcoming. Our guide was Judith Hodgson, who, together with her late husband Tony, had run a new religious community at Little Gidding from 1970 until 1998. The final stretch of road is a dirt track and then, sure enough, it turns behind some farm buildings and an old brick pigsty.

The hamlet is in the middle of fields and there is really only one way to reach it. As we drove towards Little Gidding, we marvelled at how specific Eliot’s directions were. We made our journey in May and sure enough the hedges were white with spring blossom. It would be the same, when you leave the rough roadĪnd turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade If you came by day not knowing what you came for,

It would be the same at the end of the journey, White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness. If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges Taking the route you would be likely to takeįrom the place you would be likely to come from, The poem is full of references to wartime and death (the ‘dark dove with the flickering tongue’ is a German fighter bomber) and it seems likely that Eliot was thinking of the remote village’s role as a place of sanctuary in a historical war when he chose it as the final location for Four Quartets.Īs with Burnt Norton and East Coker, Eliot guides us towards Little Gidding with a detailed description of place: He wrote it during the Blitz, in 1941, while serving as a volunteer fire watcher. It came under attack during the English Civil War and briefly served as a refuge for King Charles I when he was fleeing Cromwell’s troops.Įliot probably only visited Little Gidding once, in 1936, but it impressed him sufficiently that he named the final quartet after it. An Anglican religious community was founded there in 1626 by Nicholas Ferrar, a friend of the poet George Herbert. The final stop on our Four Quartets pilgrimage was Little Gidding, a tiny hamlet about 30 miles northwest of Cambridge.

Little gidding four quartets