Shandy Hall was the home of curate and writer Laurence Sterne, from 1760 until his death in 1768 . Sterne wrote seven of the nine volumes of The Life and Opinions ofTristram Shandy Gentleman while living in the medieval hall.

In 2012, Shandy Hall in Coxwold, North Yorkshire played host to the touring exhibition Printed In Norfolk: Coracle Publications 1989 – 2012. Helen Mitchell, of Small Publishers Fair, Simon Cutts and Erica Van Horn, Coracle Press, spent several days there installing the exhibition. Simon Cutts wrote afterwards:

“Sterne’s seeming contemporariness is perhaps a result of the dislocated narrative of Tristram Shandy. With its use of various visual devices and its gradual publication over a period of time, it might seem a fore-runner of some of the work to be seen at the Small Publishers Fair, and the wider stream of current publishing.”

Simon Cutts, 2012

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Chicken-in-the-woods fungus on a dead yew tree, Shandy Hall. The tree would have been alive when Sterne lived there. Photo Simon Cutts
Printed in Norfolk at Shandy Hall, 2012
Photo Caspar Evans
Shandy Hall, Coxwold, Yorkshire
Photo Caspar Evans