Unexpected Inheritance

After they’d both ejaculated, Ralph switched off the TV and we all went downstairs, to the long kitchen in a “modern” wing, dating only to the eighteenth century, that ran off the back of the house. This obviously was where they did most of their living. Descending three steps from the hall running across the back of the ancient house and down into a stone-walled room, one first encountered a comfortable-looking sitting area facing a fireplace. Then a dining area, and only then the restaurant-sized kitchen, beyond which there was a laundry room.

We sat at the dining table, drank beer, and Barnes told me about the house and grounds. We had driven past the pub and into Newnham, three vehicles in tandem, mine in the middle, behind Barnes’ and ahead of Sean’s, before turning right, away from the river and, via a narrow, hedge-row lined road, up into the Forest of Dean.

The main section of the house went back to Norman days. It had been a manor house built in the twelfth century. Three stories, two rooms per floor. A stair hall along the back had been added a few centuries later and then the two-and-a-half story kitchen wing off the back in the eighteenth century. The history of the grounds was even older than the house, the foundations of the house having been set on the ruins of a Roman temple.

The house had been conveniently split up for the use of the three men. The first two stories and the kitchen floor were common rooms. The first floor of the old house made up a reception hall and an office. The living and dining rooms were on the second floor. Peter’s rooms had been on the third floor. Ralph’s apartment ran across the kitchen wing and had an entrance into the old house in the hall at the back. Sean lived in attic rooms about Ralph’s apartment and could access the main house via a circular staircase in a narrow tower rising between the main house and the kitchen wing.