She ran both estates well, earning the admiration of the contadini (despite their initial alarm at her modern methods) who worked the land on a sharecropper system.
Thinking back on my experience perhaps I was naïve to venture into the area on my own, although I do live in east London, know the estates well and have rarely felt threatened.
Indeed, even those few majestic species we do allow to bide in Scotland are at risk from gamekeepers, those rural social misfits whom absentee landlords pay to keep their sporting estates well stocked.
North of Alton had always had a different, hostile flavor: the high-school kids were tougher, the industrial landmarks were bigger and darker, and the rich, who had made their millions off the dismal mills and quarries, lived on fenced estates well back from the highways.
The estate is well lit and designed with good sight lines, meaning residents feel safe – a huge factor in their mental wellbeing.
Slowly, Edel became a trusted servant of the James estate as well as James's biographer.
Scoop up, no doubt, a tidy chunk of the surrounding real estate as well.
