Kettle's Yard belongs to that rare and lucky and peculiar group of house-museums preserved after the deaths of their creators more or less as their creators intended. Jim Ede lived from 1895 to 1990. His birth date and longevity made him into a sort of proprietor of the 20th century. Beginning in the 1950s and in partnership with his wife Helen, he combined four cottages in the city of Cambridge to create the art-spaces seen here today. The up-and-down dwelling – packed tight with paintings and sculpture and prints – was for decades the scene of open houses held on most afternoons for Cambridge students. im and Helen Ede eventually gave the complex to the the University. It has (most remarkably) been maintained much as they left it.
Above, Alfred Wallis paintings on a bedroom wall. Below, the unrevised buildings in the 1950s and the facade as it looks today.
