Flatters Farmhouse

Bernie Taupin's Birthplace and First Childhood Home

Flatters Farmhouse

As pictured in the 1975 Captain Fantastic album sleeve.

Flatters today

The room in which Bernie Taupin was born, modeled by one of the current occupants.

Highway A153
Between Sleaford and Anwick, Lincolnshire
England

On This Very Spot on May 22, 1950, Bernie Taupin was born at home on a farm that his father had been hired to manage. The large house was actually a duplex, with the Taupin family on one side and another employee of the farm on the other. Taupin was born in the upstairs front bedroom on the left. Taupin immortalized his birthplace in a poem called "Flatters (A Beginning)" on his 1970 self-titled spoken-word album, which begins:

In furrows where the seagulls stole
The seed that was then sown by man,
To a rabbit hutch, and a milkman's bell
That rang by the gate and sang.

And includes a reference to his birth:

Naked and young the flesh that was born
Inside the left window.

Bonus Spot! On the country lane that runs behind the house is the ornate cement bridge where Bernie and his brother Tony played "Pooh-Sticks" with their beloved grandfather Poppy. This activity was chronicled in Taupin's 1988 autobiograhy, A Cradle of Haloes, and immortalized in a 1970 poem entitled "To a Grandfather," which goes in part:

There is only one who haunts the corridors of time.
Who took two children,
Hand-in-hand down the lengthy lanes. . . ,
Exploring things so long ago,
Like some misty memory from another land.
And we will always remember him.

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Condition: The house looks essentially the same as it did at the time.

Public Access: This is a private residence and is not open to the public.

Parking: There is no room for parking on the busy two-lane highway that runs past the house.

Location: Northeast of Sleaford in southern Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire is located on the central east coast of England.

Nearest Major Airport: Birmingham or Manchester

Directions: Flatters Farm House is located about 18 miles south of Lincoln on the south side of the A153 between Sleaford and Anwick. Take the A15 out of Lincoln for about 15 miles. Just before you get to Sleaford, go west on the A17, then north on the A153 toward Anwick and Louth. The farmhouse will be on your right just after a sideroad forks off to the right. A small sign in the front yard bears the name. The sideroad is the country lane leading to the "Pooh-Sticks" bridge.