The old gasworks at the edge of the U.K.’s of Upper Slaughter had been abandoned for decades, its stone walls softened by moss and time. Built in 1877 to light the nearby Brassey Estate, it had long since gone dark—until novelist Jeanette Winterson saw something worth rekindling.

Best known for her groundbreaking debut, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit —published when she was just 24—the novel earned the 1985 Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel and, five years later, a BAFTA Award when Winterson adapted it for television. The author, who has long explored transformation in her writing, seemed drawn to the same idea in physical form when she purchased the derelict gasworks in 2011 with plans to create a quiet writing retreat.

She secured permission to convert the 19th-century acetylen

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