While we're on dream houses there's Mount Ievers in Ireland. It was built in the 1730's by an architect named John Rothery of whom I know next to nothing.
Foursquare, intense and abstract, this house has fixed itself in my mind like an unforgettable dream. It looks exactly like my idea of a house, but it is as inscrutable as a mask.
In Sebald's The Rings of Saturn the narrator lodges for a few days with a family of impoverished gentry, the Ashburys, Three impractical old Irish spinsters occupy their house like refugees; they eat standing up, dry seed in paper bags hanging from clotheslines strung up around the library and work minute and intricate embroideries. I thought of Mt Ievers when I read about the Ashburys, but it took a few years for me to remember its name.
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