Felbrigg as it was

SIR – I was Robert Wyndham Kettoncremer’s personal secretary at Felbrigg Hall (Letters, August 11) from the late Fifties until 1964, when I left because I was pregnant.

Working for him was the most fulfilling job I ever had. He was quiet, studious, fair-minded and deeply religious, but could stand his ground. I never saw him cross.

He looked after his staff and their families on the estate, and indeed the whole community. He never made a fuss about anything, although he hated war and never got over the loss of his brother Dick.

His studies at Balliol were cut short by rheumatic fever. He had a weak heart, and was often ordered to rest. When he was too ill to come down to the Great Hall (where we worked at opposite sides of the large desk by the window), the butler would take me upstairs and usher me into the Squire’s bedroom, where I sat by his bed as he dictated his correspondence, speeches and manuscripts for his books.

At the end of Felbrigg: The Story of a House (1962), he wrote: “And so it stands, with all its associations and memories, confronting the unpredictable future. It may be the scene of happiness, kindness, hospitality in centuries to come. It may be burned to the ground this very night. The story of its first three and a half centuries has now been told; and who can know what lies ahead?”

I never heard any suggestion that he was gay, and am heartbroken that the National Trust has shown no remorse for “outing” him. He would never have left his ancestral home to them had he known they would defame him. Peggy Garrad

Cromer, Norfolk