The author Lucy M Boston first glimpsed the Norman house known simply as The Manor from a punt on the River Great Ouse in 1915. Its somewhat neglected yet deeply romantic gabled Georgian brick façade quietly captivated her. “It was beautiful and right,” she remembered in her 1973 memoir of the hidden riverside dwelling, encased by elms, beyond whose boundaries she frequently disrobed for wild swims. Little more than two decades later, in 1939, it was hers.
Built in the early 1100s in the East Anglian village of Hemingford Grey – 15 miles north-west of the city of Cambridge – it is one of England’s oldest continuously inhabited homes. The rare untouched rooms were to become a transformative force in Boston’s life, forming the inspirational wellspring for the sextet of Green Knowe children’s books, the fourth of which won the Carnegie Medal. Boston compared her relationship with The Manor to an emotive, all-encompassing affair. “Like all old lovers, the house and I have grown alike,” she wrote.
The Manor was built in the early 1100s and doubled in size in the 18th century © Kensington Leverne
A view onto the borders lovingly created by Boston © Kensington Leverne
A woodburner has replaced the open fire © Kensington Leverne
