On the third floor, you will find a game room with a pool table and a private mini-museum with original furniture and artifacts belonging to the Kiplings.

Naulakha’s extensive grounds offer entertainments in every season. Guests will find gardens, a pergola, a rhododendron tunnel, Kipling’s original clay tennis court (the first tennis court built in Vermont, available for play from mid-June through October), and on-site sledding, snowshoeing, hiking, and cross-country ski trails.

All of our properties include WiFi.

Half a mile down the road is the 571-acre Scott Farm, a socially responsible business (Certified B Corporation) that is also a property of The Landmark Trust USA. During the fall, visitors can sample 130 varieties of ecologically grown heirloom apples, from Blue Pearmain (one of Thoreau’s favorites) to Esopus Spitzenburg (beloved by Thomas Jefferson). Pick your own apples or visit the Market to pick up a pie, a jar of freshly pressed cider, or Scott Farm’s apples, pears, plums, grapes, and quince. Located on the farm are stunning stone walls constructed by the expert builders at The Stone Trust, a nonprofit organization whose offices are at Scott Farm and whose mission is to preserve and advance the art and craft of dry stone walling.

Rates: $450-$520/night (three-night minimum), $2,700-$3,120/week

Kipling’s History

Born in Bombay, India, Kipling spent much of his life in England, but he described his years in Vermont with great fondness. A family dispute forced Kipling to abandon Naulakha in 1896. “There are only two places in the world where I want to live,” he wrote, “Bombay and Brattleboro. And I can’t live in either.”

Kipling won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He was one of England’s most popular writers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 2019, Christopher Benfey published If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years, a new look at the author’s influence and import.

In his autobiography Something of Myself, Kipling wrote of Naulakha, “Ninety feet was the length of it and thirty the width, on a high foundation of solid mortared rocks which gave us an airy and a skunk-proof basement. The rest was wood, shingled, roof and sides, with dull green hand-split shingles, and the windows were lavish and wide.”

The property’s National Historic Landmark nomination includes the following description:

“Reflecting the eclectic background of its original owner and builder, the celebrated British author Rudyard Kipling, Naulakha is an unusual example of the Shingle Style. The house exhibits elements of Indian bungalow in the broad eaves, Kashmir houseboat with an elaborate carved screen, and Mississippi riverboat in the overall shape. Described, indeed, as a ship by Kipling, Naulakha continues to ‘sail’ across a Dummerston, Vermont hillside and command spectacular easterly views over a sloping meadow to the Connecticut River valley and the mountains of New Hampshire.”

