When brother and sister Charlie and Ros discover that they have inherited their aunt’s much-loved house, they must decide if they should sell it. Moving back in time, in an interwoven narrative spanning two and a half centuries, we meet those who have built the house, lived in it and loved it, worked in it, and those who would subvert it to their own ends, including the original architect as he directs the building of the house, the big Victorian family who happily live there for forty years, the maid who thinks her problems will be solved if she steals a small bibelot, the soldiers who are billeted there during World War I, the speculator who holds a treasure hunt there during the Roaring Twenties, the young couple who restores it during the 1950s, and the house’s final owner.

A novel about people, architecture, and living history, ASHENDEN is an evocative portrait of a house that becomes a character as compelling as the people who inhabit it.