Step into the world of L.M. Montgomery at the site of her beloved Cavendish home, where she wrote Anne of Green Gables. This location is part of L.M. Montgomery's Cavendish National Historic Site, alongside the neighboring Green Gables Heritage Place. A stroll through the Haunted Wood, named by Montgomery herself, connects these two iconic sites.
After her mother’s death from tuberculosis, young L.M. Montgomery was raised by her maternal grandparents, Alexander and Lucy Woolner Macneill, at their Cavendish homestead. For more than three decades, from 1876 to 1911, Cavendish was her cherished home, and she fondly referred to it as “hallowed ground.” It was the land she loved and wrote about, even after she married and left Prince Edward Island.
Today, little remains of the original home except the foundation and stone cellar, but in recent years, the kitchen was returned to the site. Although much of the structure is gone, you can explore the gardens, forests, and landscape that inspired L.M. Montgomery to write Anne of Green Gables and many of her other stories. She loved the old apple trees, birches, poplars, spruces, pathways, and flower gardens surrounding her home.
There are many mature trees around L.M. Montgomery's home.
Following her grandmother’s death in 1911, L.M. Montgomery married Ewen MacDonald and left Cavendish for Ontario. The homestead remained in the Macneill family, but the house was closed after L.M. Montgomery moved away. Around 1920, much of the original homestead fell to ruin, except for the kitchen. Today, the farm property is still owned by the Macneill family. In the 1980s, John Macneill, a great-grandson of Alexander and Lucy Woolner Macneill, alongside his wife Jennie Macneill, lovingly tended to the site and opened it to visitors. It is now maintained by their son David Macneill.
Here's a photo of the fields around the home.
Here is a photograph of the vegetable garden.
Here's a well on the property.
Placards with quotes from L.M. Montgomery’s journals are placed around the homestead property to help visitors see the site through her eyes. L.M. Montgomery began writing Anne of Green Gables in the kitchen of the Cavendish homestead, and wrote most of it in her cherished bedroom by its gable window. Nearby, you can walk down "Lover’s Lane" or you can spook yourself along the "Haunted Wood" path, which leads to the Green Gables house. Montgomery named these places in her real life, and she brought them to life for her readers in Anne of Green Gables.
In the site's bookstore, you'll find an array of books by and about Montgomery, as well as other charming gifts. The original desk and scales from the Cavendish Post Office, run by Montgomery and her grandparents, are also on display, with the current Cavendish Post Office nearby housing an exhibit on her life.
The kitchen, the heart of the old house, has a fascinating history of its own. After the house fell into disrepair in the 1920s, only the kitchen survived. L.M. Montgomery’s uncle repurposed this part of the building and used it as an outbuilding in the barnyard to house animals and later as a storage shed. In the 1960s, a Catholic priest and historian named Father Francis Bolger was researching L.M. Montgomery and writing a biography about her. Father Bolger asked the Macneills if he could use the kitchen building, and they gave him permission to use it. He moved the kitchen structure to his summer home, cleaned and repaired the building, and then used it as his writing cottage. In 1974, Father Bolger published a biography on L.M. Montgomery called The Years Before Anne. After Father Bolger’s death in 2017, the kitchen was returned to the Macneill property, where it now serves as a museum next to the bookstore.
Visiting the Site of L.M. Montgomery's Cavendish home is a poignant experience, offering a deep connection to the places and memories that shaped her stories. The sense of home, so central to Montgomery’s writing, comes alive here, making it a truly special place to explore.
Official Websites:
The Site of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Cavendish Home
L.M. Montgomery's Cavendish National Historic Site, Parks Canada
Location:
The Site of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Cavendish Home
8521 Cavendish Road Rte, PE-6, Cavendish, PE C0A 1N0, Canada.
Image credits:
Photographs by World of Anne Shirley.
Map copyright OpenStreetMap.
References:
Cavert, Mary Beth. (2024). The House of Home: Montgomery’s Macneill Grandparents’ Homestead. The Anne of Green Gables Manuscript. Retrived from: https://annemanuscript.ca/stories/the-house-of-home/
Hamilton, Kathleen and Frei, Sibyl. Finding Anne on Prince Edward Island. Ragweed Press. 1998.
Krzewinski, Agatha. The Original Homes of Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne of Green Gables. Sullivan Entertainment. Retrieved from: https://www.anneofgreengables.com/blog-posts/the-original-homes-of-lucy-maud-montgomery
L.M. Montgomery's Cavendish National Historic Site. (2024). Retrieved from: https://parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/pe/cavendish
Piece of L.M. Montgomery's childhood home returned to original homestead. (2018, December 18). CBC News. Retrieved from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-lucy-maud-montgomery-kitchen-building-homestead-1.4951107
The Site of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Cavendish Home. Retrieved from: https://www.lmmontgomerycavendishhome.com/
Created July 17, 2007. Last updated August 7, 2024.
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