Novelist’s seaside home up for sale

The novelist and social reformer’s most famous and posthumously published novel hit TV screens last year in an adaptation starring Anna Maxwell Martin and David Morrissey. The five-bedroomed mid-terraced Victorian house at 71 Cliff Road, Hornsea, where she worked on the novel, is being sold by estate agents Hornsea Property Services. Her presence there is marked by a plaque.

Steve Ward, from HPS, said: “We have had quite a lot of interest because of the link with Mrs Holtby. People come in especially because they have seen the plaque and want to have a look at it.”

Although set in the fictional South Riding, the novel drew its inspiration from the East Riding, and features characters loosely based on real people, including the area’s first female Alderman Mrs Beddows – Holtby’s mother, Alice, held that particular distinction.

In 1931 she was diagnosed as suffering from chronic nephritis and was given only two years to live.

She died on September 29, 1935, aged 37. The house needs restoration and modernisation.