Posted by John Nichols on March 09, 2012 at 15:32:03 user Mcneacail.
Beckfoot is without doubt AR's greatest mystery. I have no doubt it is made up of things he saw or wanted in a house. We have only his words to go on for the house and a few sketches. So we have to draw a picture with the words and the remnants of the sketches left to us.
Laying out the house is an interesting exercise that I wish I had time to spend on, rather than this academic stuff.
But let us start at the beginning, Beckfoot is first mentioned in SA. We learn it has a boat house, fairly typical of the lake boat houses and it has a Skull and Cross Bones on the boathouse, if my memory serves me correctly.
There is also a location sketch for Beckfoot on the front map. The location map gives us the angle of the buildings and an idea of the relative locations, but little else.
One asks the question, did AR know the extent to which Beckfoot would become part of the stories, and did he not box himself into a corner with the early stuff, that he had to later stay with.
So is there anything I missed from SA?
JMN