Howick Hall Gardens.

"Fallodon and Howick both breathe the spell of that windy land between hills and sea, which few cast off if they have been bred in it, least of all the Greys in the cherished intervals between one bout of public service and the next. But it was Howick that most won the heart of Charles Grey the younger. It stands, drawn back a mile from the shore, between the lonely ruins of Dunstanborough and the little port of Alnmouth. That coast, since celebrated by Turner and by Swinburne, was then bleakly unknown to good society, which had not yet developed a taste for such severe and distant joys. Their friends in London thought of the Greys, as old Chaucer thought of Alan de Strother, as coming from some place ' Fer in the North, I can not telle where.'" Extract from "Lord Grey of the Reform Bill, being the life of Charles, second Earl Grey" (Open Library). Charles, second Earl Grey was prime Minister from 1830 to 1834 and Earl Grey tea is named after him.

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