Clouds Hill, Dorset

This tiny cottage was the final home of Colonel T E Lawrence (1888-1935) who achieved fame as “Lawrence of Arabia”. It is an isolated former forester’s cottage a short distance from Bovington Camp, which is a training centre for the British Army’s Royal Armoured Corps, in the Wareham Forest of east Dorset. T E Lawrence was an archaeologist who had worked in the Middle East before the outbreak of World War One. In 1914 he was recruited by the British Army and became the leader of an Arab brigade that used guerrilla tactics against the Ottoman Turks. He later wrote of his exploits in his book “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”.

Lawrence first rented Clouds Hill in 1923 and bought it in 1925, although he did not live there full-time until shortly before his death in 1935.

He died in a motorcycle accident near Bovington Camp when he swerved to avoid two boys on bicycles and was thrown off. The cottage at Clouds Hill is now preserved exactly as Lawrence left it, even down to the absence of electric light. 

© John Welford