Daphne du Maurier
• Her father bought a boathouse at Bodinnick, Cornwall, to convert intoa holiday cottage.
• She wrote sections of Frenchman’s Creek in a Coastguard hut above Lantic Bay.
• Her character Rebecca met her lover in a boathouse, staged at Polridmouth for the film of the book.

Dylan Thomas
• Wrote Under Milk Wood and more in a boathouse at Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.

Agatha Christie
• Had a small boathouse at her home,Greenways, on the banks of the River Dart in Devon.
• The home where Christie died, in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, was demolished but its boathouse remains.
• Her character Marlene Tucker is found strangled in a boathouse.

Two architectural specialists have recently published books on this subject under the same title. Boathouses by Adam Mornement (Frances Lincoln Publishing, ISBN 9780711228689) and Boathouses by Clare Sherriff (Unicorn Press, ISBN 9780906290972) are available at good bookshops and via rnli.org.uk/amazon.

Look in our Classified section (page 43) for any chances to stay in a former lifeboathouse yourself.