Anyone out there able to lend us a couple of million – admittedly with no prospect of repayment? Please? Pretty please?
See, this week’s Country Life features something I want to buy: a “Classic Georgian country house with secret passageways for sale”, no less.
It’s the history of those subterranean passages that really appeals. The eldest daughter being caught by her father returning late one night from a secret, moonlight rendezvous with her suitor – a quite unsuitable man he’d expressly forbidden her from seeing. Sent upstairs to change into her nightdress and wait whilst the butler went outside to cut suitable switches; bent over the end of the bed for the soundest of thrashings.
The maid, fearing punishment that evening by the butler, discovered trying to flee the house by one of the secret escape routes. And *how* he whipped her as a result, the riding crop borrowed from the head groom chastising and chastening to great effect.
Or that time in the forties when the house was requisitioned to be used as a school – educating posh young ladies who’d had to flee London, alongside the local girls. The arguments and fights would be legendary; the two groups of rivals would only be united when sharing a furtive cigarette in the hidden tunnels, and when hauled before the headmaster to be caned after they’d been caught.
Two million? It’s not much, to ask, is it?
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