13
I had paid a visit to Ashdown Castle before, only a few weeks past. On that occasion, the place had been half a ruin, with parts of its roofs fallen in, glass missing from the windows, walls tumbling down — a wreck, in short. What a pity, too, for it was a large, rambling old place, five centuries old, with appealing higgledy-piggledy architecture all built from unusual brown brick.
The several sloping roofs were all intact, now. The windows glittered with bright, new glass, every rickety wall had been rebuilt or stabilised, and there had even been some cleaning done to its decorative stone embellishments. How they had achieved so much in so short a space of time was beyond me to imagine; I could only gape in astonishment, and marvel again at just how much money these people had to th
