DW first came across Grove Place while on leave staying with a friend near Lymington towards the end of the War, bought it and moved in during the summer of 1945.
Up until then a Londoner through-and-through, DW said goodbye to his flat in Chatsworth Court on the last day of June 1945, giving a cocktail party on the bare boards, and at the age of forty eight, settled down to a new life in the country.
Described as a ‘mini stately home’ by his friends, Grove was an eighteenth century Georgian mansion of modest size built onto a Jacobean farmhouse.
When DW moved in, there was a fair amount of work to be done, and he set about renovating the house and grounds with gusto.
He nearly got into serious trouble for spending more on the renovations than the government then allowed (for the full story in DW’s own words, click here), and over the next two decades he indulged his passion for collecting by filling its various sizeable rooms with books and other collectables, and by pursuing his hobby of bricklaying in the garden.
In the months when he wasn’t writing, the house became a focus for entertaining, and many of the ‘great and the good’ paid protracted visits.
References : Country House History around Lymington, Brockenhurst and Milford-on-Sea by
Blake Pinnell St Barbe Museum Lymington 2002 pp 77-107
Phil Baker Chapter 33
‘Saturdays with Bricks’ p27
‘Drink and Ink’ pp 233-235
Provenance : Various collections
