Category Archives: Stories

From The Sleeping Hedgehog, date unknown. No idea if it’s a story retold there, or a true story transcribed into written form. Not that it really matters, does it? There, my friend. I am not good company tonight, but if you can … Continue reading →

She was simply dressed clothes of summer colours and she had a traveling bag over her back and a flute case as well. She had a travelling bag over her shoulder, and the Estate cats were following her up the path to the Manor … Continue reading →

Dear Katrina, Do you know that we do have a Lord and Lady of the Kinrowan Estate? They’re purely symbolic but they do exist. It was at a handfasting between one of the Several Annies, the lass named Robin, and … Continue reading →

We’ve gone and lost the Cheshire Cat again. Silly little bugger will wander into the conservatory. It’s quite a nasty place, you know. Started out very pretty — glass dome, fountains, marble cupids–all the Victorian doodads. But then the second … Continue reading →

Kinrowan Hall’s a vast sprawling edifice going back far longer than one would suspect and it’s been added onto more often than perhaps was for the better. What that means is that we who are staff here each have private … Continue reading →

From the archives of Sleeping Hedgehog, the in-house journal published here for centuries now. Welcome, laddy-buck. Come in and find a seat here by the fire, and tell me your pleasure! Take a settle; they’re cushioned and wide enough for two, should … Continue reading →

I was watching a New Years Eve gig and it was clear to me how tribal it felt. Good communities are tribes. They have rituals and myths and those kinds of deeper realities that light up everyday reality and give … Continue reading →

So if you’ve been with us for any length of time, you no doubt that a lot of us here tell stories about a place in Scotland called the Kinrowan Estate, its inhabitants and what happens there. Some might sound … Continue reading →

A Québécois band introduced eggnog to this Estate back in the Fifties by its French name lait de poule (literally, “hen’s milk”). Eggnog’s a deceptively easy drink to make and consequently a bit hard to get precisely right. They were … Continue reading →

A letter from Lady Alexandra Margaret Quinn, Head Gardener here in the Reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India, to Tessa, her botanist friend who … Continue reading →