[Wodehouse took the name from] Emsworth, a village in Hampshire, and more specifically . . . a prep school in the town, Emsworth House, where PG Wodehouse stayed as a guest on and off from 1903. Wodehouse liked Emsworth so much that in 1910 he bought a house in the village called ‘Threepwood’.If you know your Wodehouse, and me, I think you can see where this is going.
Emsworth is in the borough of Havant, so I took to their website to find more, and more could indeed be found.
Turns out Emsworth is the "culinary capital of the south of England." Good to know, but how about that Threepwood House?
I found this bit in their charmingly titled "HAVANT BOROUGH TOWNSCAPE, LANDSCAPE AND SEASCAPE CHARACTER ASSESSMENT"
The writer and journalist P.G. Wodehouse came to Emsworth to visit a friend at a small preparatory school called Emsworth House. He became a schoolmaster here, and it is said that the quiet community in Emsworth suited him and he was able to produce a quantity of written work. From Emsworth School he moved into a property of his own known as Threepwood House on Record Road, which backed onto the grounds of Emsworth House. He lived in this property from 1904 to 1914, and it is now included on the List of Buildings of Local Interest. His stay in the area is marked by his use of local place names in his Jeeves and Wooster novels.Paydirt! Here is Record Road in Emsworth:
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Emsworth House School looks to be to the west of the lower half of Record Road, so we can presume that Threepwood House is there and most likely in private hands. From this vantage point it looks surprisingly suburban an environment for Wodehouse to be living in, but it's hard to say how much things might have changed in the past century.
As an added point of interest, cast your eye to the northern end of Record Road and take a look at the front of the house directly across the street. I am not certain at all, but it looks to me like someone's car has fallen into an enourmous hole where a driveway should be.
