A RARE chance to bag a beach-side hut – with stunning views which inspired a poem by Keats – is about to go under the hammer with a guide price of £200,000.

The two-room, timber-built freehold property on the foreshore of Teignmouth Beach is being described by the estate agents as a ‘super’ beach hut.

It boasts a generously proportioned day room-cum-kitchen and storage space as well as its own running trot mooring and a view up the Teign which doubtless sent Keats skipping for his quill and paper.

It is due to go under the hammer at Woods’ auction at the Jolly Farmer pub in Market street, Newton Abbot, on July 30 (6pm) unless previously sold.

Auctioneer Nick Wood is excited by the hut’s potential.

‘This is an exceptional property, providing ample space to store kayaks, surf boards, lifejackets, crabbing nets, deckchairs and everything that anyone could possibly want for a day messing about on the water,’ he declared.

He described the kitchen – measuring 18ft 10ins by 14ft 5ins, narrowing to 8ft 5ins – as a superb addition.

Keats, who lived just behind the beach in Northumberland Place, did not enjoy the best of weather during his brief stay in 1818. It bucketed down, but when the clouds cleared he put pen to paper to write:

‘Here all the summer I could stay,

For there’s Bishop’s teign

And King’s teign

And Coomb at the clear Teign head -

Where close by the stream

You may have your cream

All spread upon barley bread.’

The wordsmith dismissed his offering – all seven verses of it – as doggerel. The recipient of this clumsy verse was the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, who might have appreciated the descriptions as he was a Devonian.