Knapwater House (Kingston Maurward House, Stinsford). Source of photograph: Desperate Remedies in the Anniversary Edition of the Wessex Novels, 1920, based in part on previous editions and the photographs of 1912. Facing title-page.
Knapwater House, probably suggested by Kingston Maurward House, Stinsford, a village not far [c. 5 miles] from Dorchester, stands in a magnificently timbered park. Built of brick by a cousin of [Prime Minister] William Pitt at the end of the eighteenth century, Pitt had the whole house encased with a shell of [Portland] stone, fixed to the brickwork with copper clamps. The description given in the story [Desperate Remedies] that "the house was regularly and substantially built of clean, grey freestone throughout" is verified upon examination
[These remarks by the anonymous editors often seem to be based on Thomas Hardy's Wessex (1913) by Herman Lea -- PVA].
Hardy, Thomas. Desperate Remedies. New York & London: Harper & Brothers, 1912.
Last modified 20 August 2002