Some legends belonging to the time of the Civil War have been told of Harston House but they carry no conviction Formerly a large brick dove cote stood at the end of the orchard but was unfortunately pulled down by Mr. Long.

Its huge foundations still trouble the gardener in his digging operations and it was this Dove Cote which was large enough to seat fifty men when the Horkey feasts were held there.

In 1893 the house was bought by Sir William Graham Greene who helped to establish the Naval Intelligence Department prior to the Second World War[citation needed] The author Graham Greene used to come to Harston House to spend his summers with Sir William (his uncle).

According to Graham Greene's description of his childhood: "It was at Harston I found quite suddenly I could read — the book was Dixon Brett, Detective.

I didn't want anyone to know of my discovery, so I read only in secret, in a remote attic, but my mother must have spotted what I was at all the same, for she gave me Ballantyne's The Coral Island for the train journey home — always an interminable journey with the long wait between trains at Bletchley..." Terence Edward Armstrong and Iris Forbes (the daughter of James Grant Forbes) whom he married in 1943.

The village is located on the A10 road, which provides links to Cambridge and the M11 motorway to the north, and Royston, Hertford and London to the south.