AUTHOR’S NOTEWhen I wrote this book, the house I was talking about as ‘Lyn’ is really Longleat, one of the most beautiful ancestral homes in England.
Longleat, which belongs to the Marquis of Bath, is the most perfect example of Italianate Elizabethan architecture in the British Isles.
It began as a Priory built by the Augustinian Canons and sold for fifty-three pounds to Sir John Thynne in 1515 when King Henry VIII dissolved the Monasteries.
It is so beautiful and ethereal that one expects it to float away into the sunshine.
The Great Hall with its lovely stone-flagged floor and hammerbeam ceiling support is unchanged since 1559. In the Red Library there is a copy of Henry VII’s Great Bible of 1641.
Queen Elizabeth I was entertained royally in the State Dining Room in 1574 and, of course, there is a ghost.
I have not written about the Longleat ghost, but it came to me in a dream and I find it really fascinating.