Maggie Smith's House (former)

British actor with a 72-year career, Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films and the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey. She won Oscars for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969 and California Suite in 1978.

Historic England's statutory list dates the farmhouse to the early 1800s: red brick, 2 storeys, a hipped tiled roof, and a modillion eaves cornice. It has been Grade II listed since May 1985.

The barn to its south is older than the farmhouse and carries its own entry: 18th century, stone rubble, part of the north wall faced in tarred weatherboarding. A waggon entrance breaks that wall at the centre.

Fittleworth grew at a ford on the River Rother, with a corn watermill and stone bridges in place by about 1200. Sandstone and ironstone quarried in the parish built its timber-framed houses.

Maggie and her second husband, the playwright Beverley Cross, bought the place in 1981, according to SussexLive. She kept the location to herself, telling Graham Norton in 2015 only that she lived near Storrington.

She raised her sons here and kept the farm for more than 4 decades. Probate records reported by The Sun show it passed, after her death in September 2024, to a family trust she set up in 2019.

Edward Elgar rented Brinkwells, a cottage in the same parish, from 1917 and finished his cello concerto there in 1919. He gave the cottage up in 1921.