Bessy's sister's house was one of a row of small red-brick cottages all exactly alike, with no front gar dens and shabby paintwork.

Each of the inn's 54 rooms, spread throughout 14 red-brick cottages, are furnished with antiques, and many open onto a neighboring vineyard.

Matilda saw a narrow dirt-path leading to a tiny red-brick cottage.

Its shady courtyards and red-brick cottages are now used to house students; the lucky ones are chosen each academic year in a complex ballot.

"Hey, that was my building," she said as we approached the facility, a series of large, red-brick cottages situated atop a vast expanse of green lawn.

Similarly, she could glance to her left, down De Beers Road to the red-brick cottage behind its white picket fence and discreet sign, "French Dressmakers.

In the little red-brick cottages and the half-timbered houses he could already imagine the curtains being twitched back.

Each block comprises three red-brick cottages of a single storey plus attics under a tiled roof, with two slightly projecting gabled end wings.

The red-brick cottages feature hexagonal latticed windows, ornate timber gabling and a prominent central chimney stack.

It is but a small place, with an ivied church, a fine vicarage, and a row of red-brick cottages each in its own little garden.