DUMMERSTON — The nonprofit Landmark Trust USA makes money to preserve historic properties through short-term rentals of such holdings as the late Victorian-era writer Rudyard Kipling’s former Vermont home.
And soon, his horse barn.
Kipling, born in India and raised in England, was 26 when he visited the United States on his 1892 honeymoon and decided to build a house near his wife’s family in the southeastern town of Dummerston.
The man who’d become the first English-language author to win the Nobel Prize in literature named his 2½-story hideaway Naulakha after a Hindi word meaning “jewel beyond price.” There, he penned “The Jungle Book” and “Captains Courageous” and conceived “Kim” and “Just So Stories,” only to depart after constructing a barn for his horses, Nip and Tuck, in 1896.
The property stayed in local hands, then sat unused for 50 years before Landmark Trust USA — an offshoot of Britain’s Landmark Trust conservation charity — purchased it in 1992.
To generate revenue, the organization rents Kipling’s home and carriage house for short-term stays and small gatherings. This week, it’s announcing plans to convert the horse barn’s loft into a studio apartment.
“The Naulakha stable project furthers our preservation mission, ensuring this remarkable place is accessible for future generations,” Susan McMahon, the trust’s executive director, said in a statement.
The plan is part of a $1.25 million Naulakha capital campaign, which is 85% complete and will also replace several roofs and improve groundwater drainage.
Landmark Trust USA manages six historic properties that include the Naulakha buildings, a nearby Dummerston farmhouse and sugarhouse and the Amos Brown House in Whitingham. It also maintains the 570-acre Scott Farm orchard, which grows 130 varieties of heirloom apples just down the road from Kipling’s home.
“We’re making good progress,” Jeremy Ebersole, the trust’s public outreach manager, said of the improvement campaign. “The goal is to have the stable rental done and ready sometime in the fall.”
