THE MANOR, HEMINGFORD GREY, CAMBRIDGESHIRE
On the southern bank of the river Great Ouse in the idyllic Cambridgeshire village of Hemingford Grey (around 18 miles northwest of Cambridge) lies The Manor. This extraordinary property, set in over four acres of gardens, was built around 1130 and is reputedly one of the oldest continuously inhabited houses in Britain. When Lucy Boston bought the house in 1939, she set about restoring it, as far as she could, back to its Norman original. She then turned her attention outdoors, where she created a magical garden full of old roses and irises and unusual scented plants. In her sixties, Lucy found acclaim with her Green Knowe series of books for children, which came out between 1954 and 1976, in which The Manor was recreated as Green Knowe. In the years that Lucy was writing her books, she also crafted exquisite patchwork coverlets (not quilts as the pieces aren’t wadded), which she continued to do into her nineties. Self-taught, with just one exception in which she incorporated appliqué, all of Lucy’s patchworks).
