Cabin Fever: Sheds and Shelters, Huts and Hideaways

Intriguing and strangely magnetic, cabins fulfil the longing in all of us to indulge again in our childhood reveries of secret hideaways, built of branches and leaves or whatever is to hand; to enter our own private world; to commune with nature and with our own selves. Hidden in the forest, up in the treetops, by the side of still or moving water, down at the end of the garden, the cabin is the most magical of dwellings. Magical, but real too, as these photos from all over the world testify: fishing cabins in Maine; the shed in Wales to which Dylan Thomas retreated to write; hides built by wild duck hunters in France, Finnish saunas, and English beach huts. The search for solitude, the need to throw off the trappings of worldly life, has produced some of the world’s most romantic and beguiling buildings. Brought together here, they remind us of that wilder side of human nature which we all recognize and perhaps seek to nourish more. Their mixture of charm, eccentricity and improvisation has truly universal appeal.