![]() It is not an especially graceful or well-proportioned building, just a bit too tall for its width and giving the impression that it has been haphazardly assembled of all the pieces the owner thought should go into a rich man’s house: a porticoed front door, bay windows, terraces, a conservatory. The house is late Victorian, built for the founder of Hambleton’s, the toffee manufacturers, in 1890. The sycamore has outgrown the lawn and towers threateningly over the house, the ivy covers more of the grey stone. The garden is looking a bit rough around the edges now. It is a large house, a house which announces itself to the world, and if it spoke louder to me as a boy than it does to me now, it is still the same Greystone: sitting foursquare in the garden, with its smooth lawns and yew hedges and yes, even with the big urns filled with geraniums either side of the front door steps. But I know this must be it, and as I continue down the drive an earlier perspective reasserts itself. ![]() ![]() In my memory Greystone House is more imposing, more extravagant in its collection of gables and chimneys and outbuildings. ![]() I walk through the gates of 22 Andover Lane, and for a moment I wonder if I have come to the right place. ![]()
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