Kingstone Lisle

Kingstone Lisle is the home Thomas Hughes had built for his retirement in his utopian village of Rugby, Tennessee. Things didn't quite work out to his plans and he never lived there, although he did spend a few nights in the house when he visited. Yes, we know the village in England where he was born is spelled Kingston Lisle, but Hughes put an "e" on the end in Tom Brown's School Days and also, apparently, when he named the house. So it remains in Rugby.

When Hughes finally left his experiment, the house became home to the first Rector of Christ Church and his family. Later it served other families as a private home, and even was the village post office for a while. It is now furnished in Hughes and period antiques, and is open as part of the Historic Rugby museum.

Behind it sits Percy Cottage, built by Hughes's friend Sir Henry Kimber (1834-1923) and named for his son. Kimber was a lawyer who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 until 1913.