Keats House - Garden: The Mulberry Tree

Garden: The Mulberry Tree

The tree is a Common or Black Mulberry and believed to date from the 17th century. Mulberry trees have been cultivated in England since at least the early 16th century but are not native to Great Britain. As there were other fruit trees in the grounds of Keats House, the mulberry tree may have been part of an orchard. If the tree is as old as it is thought to be, then John Keats would have seen it, although he did not mention it in his writings. Keats did mention a white mulberry tree once in a July 1818 letter to his friend John Hamilton Reynolds.