Ruskin bought Brantwood in the Lake District 'without seeing it for fifteen hundred pounds... a mere shed of rotten timber and loose stone' ( Works, 29.101) and it was his home from 1872 until his death in 1900. Ruskin told Charles Wood:
I forget whether I told you that I have got a little place on Coniston Water with six acres of heather and ten of wood coming down on the house so steeply that the place is called Brantwood - "Brant" being "steep" in old Cumberland.( Works, 29.533)
He told Charles Eliot Norton, 'The house-small, old, damp, and smoky-chimneyed-somebody must help me get to rights' ( Works, 37.35). The Brantwood estate consited of a 'two storied cottage, and a bank of turf in front of it; - then a narrow mountain road, and on the other side of that Naboth's vineyard' ( Works, 37.39). Ruskin took possession of the property on 13 September 1872. In his will of 1883 Ruskin stated that his cousin Joan Severn and her husband were:
never to sell the estate of Brantwood or any part thereof, not to let upon building lease any part thereof, but to maintain the said estate and buildings thereon in decent order and in good repair in like manner as I have done, and praying them further to accord during thirty consecutive days in every year such permission to strangers to see the house and pictures as I have done in my lifetime
He presented Brantwood to them by deed of gift in 1885.