![]() ![]() ![]() The Mount was a higgledy-piggledy old house, with leaded windows, half-timbering, towering chimney-stacks and its roof of clay tiles well weathered. He travelled 500 miles south, to the home of his maternal grandmother in Cookham Dean. In the aftermath of his mother’s death, together with his three siblings, five-year-old Grahame left Scotland. ‘Grahame retreated from overwhelming sadness into an imaginary world inspired by Nature.’ His first memories were of the ‘hurry and scurry’ of the pierside, fisherfolk and nests of water voles along the banks of the Crinan Canal. He spent his earliest years in houses on the banks of Loch Fyne in Argyllshire, still then a remote rural location, scarcely disturbed by the new railways. Country Life's Top 100 architects, builders, designers and gardenersįaced with a difficult decision, he explained that he ‘would go forth once more’ on the Berkshire Downs within sight of his house ‘and give it prayerful consideration among my friends the hares and plovers’. ![]()
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