Nor at the foot of your bed no, all the night throughīut your kind thought has laid me less than six feet I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do Run with you in the evenings along the shore,Įxcept in a kind of dream and you, if you dream a moment, You see me there.So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front doorĪnd you’d soon open leave on the kitchen floor I’ve changed my ways a little I cannot now The House Dog’s Grave (Haig, an English bulldog) It was here,along the side of the house ,that the Jeffers buried the bull dogs that were always part of the family. Our docent carried a book of Jeffers poetry with her and read appropriate poems as we went. My mother and father, then in their early 80’s, came with me. My favorite tour was the first one I took. I have taken three tours and each one was very different. This is the first structure that Jeffers would build on the five acres of land he purchased on Carmel Point for $500.00. Looking to the right you will see the house. To get beyond that fence, take a docent-led tour of the house, garden and tower. The low ceilings helped retain the heat from the fireplace. It was built to withstand the often cold winds off the Pacific. Why block out that view? Why so small? So dark? Yet five minutes into a tour of Tor House, you find it hard to imagine a more magical dwelling. This dream home of the poet Robinson Jeffers-a cramped stone cottage with low ceilings, minuscule windows, and heavy, somber furnishings-seems all wrong.

Una wanted a house modeled on a Tudor barn, so the couple hired a stonemason Jeffers signed on as his apprentice, working until “my fingers had the art to make stone love stone.” “It was evident that we had come, without knowing it,” Jeffers later wrote, “to our inevitable place.” That year they bought five acres of land on a cliff at Carmel Point that encompassed a dramatic outcropping of rock-a tor in Scottish Gaelic.

In 1914, Robinson Jeffers and his wife, Una, settled in Carmel, drawn to the rugged coastline that reminded them of Great Britain.

Robinson jeffers tor house foundation