The Shell House (2007)
“The lawns are cut into geometric shapes by diagonal paths; in two places where they converge we see octagonal stone basins with elaborate fountains. The garden is punctuated by stone obelisks and statues, small standard trees and clipped cypress and yew, all in a complex symmetrical design. The twin summerhouses— one guarded by telamons, one by caryatids—face each other across the width. As we can see no colour, the overall impression is of an extremely formal garden: clipped, ordered, meticulo...usly maintained.In bed on Monday morning, Greg was reading a booklet given him by Faith. It was rather dry: a few black-and-white photographs breaking up pages and pages of close print, listing unelaborated facts about earls and acreages. Greg skimmed through information about early buildings, extensions, feuding families and a hunting squire; about an earlier Tudor house on the site of Graveney Hall. The present mansion, he read, dated from the 1750s, going through a series of extensions and refinements in the late nineteenth century.MoreLess
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