In those days Fellside House was a very different kind of dwelling from
the gracious modern Tudor mansion which now crowned and beautified the
hill-side above Grasmere Lake. It was then an old rambling stone house,
with queer little rooms and inconvenient passages, low ceilings,
thatched gables, and all manner of strange nooks and corners. Lady
Maulevrier was of too strictly conservative a temper to think of
pulling down an old house which had been in her husband's family for
generations. She left the original cottage undisturbed, and built her
new house at right angles with it, connecting the two with a wide
passage below and a handsome corridor above, so that access should be
perfect in the event of her requiring the accommodation of the old
quaint, low ceiled rooms for her family or her guests. During forty
years no such necessity had ever arisen; but the old house, known as the
south wing, was still left intact, the original furniture undisturbed,
although the only occupants of the building were her ladyship's faithful
old house-steward, James Steadman, and his elderly wife.
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