And what with the bread and water and being prisoners, and not being able to tame any mice in our prisons, I quite feel that we had suffered it up thoroughly, and now we could start fair.
I think myself that descriptions of places are generally dull, but I have sometimes thought that was because the authors do not tell you what you truly want to know.

However, dull or not, here goes--because you won't understand anything unless I tell you what the place was like.
The Moat House was the one we went to stay at.

There has been a house there since Saxon times.

It is a manor, and a manor goes on having a house on it whatever happens.

The Moat House was burnt down once or twice in ancient centuries--I don't remember which--but they always built a new one, and Cromwell's soldiers smashed it about, but it was patched up again.