If I had not happened upon a couple of girls exercising their ponies, I might be looking still. Leaving the car in a narrow lane, I walked along a track. On the curve of a bend, I saw the dwelling, a single storey, octagonal house with two chimneys, a roughcast finish and latticed windows. It stood in a meadow that in spring and summer must be glorious but now looked a sorry sight. Close by were two outhouses, presumably one of them housing the earth closet and the other a shed. A little way beyond was a paddock and stable. Close up, I saw that the roughcast finish on the walls of the house had been decorated with tiny pebbles and fragments of coloured glass, giving the building an idiosyncratic appearance. When no one answered my knock on the firmly shut oak front door, I peered through the nearest of the latticed windows into a library. Under the window, a sturdy desk held an oil lamp and cut glass pen and ink stand. The surface was strewn with notebooks and sheets of foolscap paper.
