“Tower Hill” (Green Acres?)
Though we’re not 100% certain, this could be the house referred to as Tower Hill on the map and may also be “Green Acres” from Mary Ware’s Promised Land, Part 2, Chapter VIII. It’s location by description (on a hill behind the railroad station and across from Oaklea) is correct.
Mary Ware’s Promised Land, Part 2, Chapter VIII. (excerpt of Mary Ware’s diary entry)
Green Acres is just across the road from Oaklea. The grounds don’t make you think of a big, stately park as Oaklea does. It is more countrified. But it is the dearest, most homelike, inviting old place that one can imagine. I had been there several times with Lloyd and Mrs. Sherman, and remembered it as a real picture-book sort of house, with its low gables and quaint casement windows. I remembered that it had a garden gay as Grandmother Ware’s, with its holly-hocks and prince’s feathers, its marigolds and yellow roses; and that it had mint and sage and all sorts of spicy, savory things in some of its borders. But I didn’t know half of its charms. Now, after two months, I am just beginning to discover the extent of them.
“When a family has owned a place for three generations, as the Wyckliffes did Green Acres, and have spent their time making it livable and lovable, the result leaves little more to be wished for. The hillside that slopes down from the back of the house has a small orchard on part of it and a smaller vineyard on the other, but both quite ample for our needs. Down at the bottom a little brook trickles along from a cold spring, and watercress and forget-me-nots grow along its edges. The apple trees are in bloom now. This morning I spent a whole hour up in the gnarly crotch of one of them doing nothing but enjoying to the fullest the sweetness of their white and pink glory.
“When we came only the early wildflowers were out, but all the knoll between the gate and the house looked as if there had been a snowfall of anemones and spring beauties. It isn’t possible to put into black and white the joy of that first home-coming. We walked up from the station, and when we went through the great gate and heard it click behind us, shutting us in on our own grounds, we turned and looked at each other and laughed like delighted children. It was as if we had reached that land that we used to sing about, where
“‘Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green.’
No wonder they named the place Green Acres!
“We left the wide driveway that winds around the hill to the house, and took the little path that leads straight up to it under the trees. The footpath to peace, Phil calls it.