At the Knoll House Hotel (https://www.knollhouse.co.uk) with family. This was built as a holiday house for a rich family in the 1920s and became a hotel in 1931. It has only belonged to three families since then and not much has changed. A lot of the furniture and decor looks original. They have indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, a small golf course and are surrounded by a National Trust beach and heathland. The meals are enormous and everyone seems to have either children or dogs – and in some cases, both.
Enid Blyton stayed here when she was writing the Famous Five novels and spent whole summers observing the clientele for characters in her books. It does feel very much as if Joan Hickson is about to pop round the corner with her knitting and give her theories on the man found with a dagger in his ribs beside the swimming pool.





Hmm, the mystery ruins could be all sorts…folly? or…the man by the pool had just retrieved something valuable hidden in the hollow gree and put it into the second brick arch, but not before he’d been spotted. The hotel sounds like an ideal place to meet all the family, but it’s clear just how dry the grounds are.
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