Several of the family's novels were written at Lemmons: Kingsley's The Green Man (1969) and The Alteration (1976); Jane's Odd Girl Out (1972) and Mr. Wrong (1975); and Martin's The Rachel Papers (1973) and Dead Babies (1975).

[8][9] Ian Sansom writes that, for the brief period that the Amises, Howards, Day-Lewises and others were in residence, Lemmons became "the most brilliantly creative household in Britain".

[13] Frances Trollope and four of her children moved to Hadley Common from Belgium, where they had fled to escape debtors' prison in England.

R. H. Super writes that Trollope invited eight guests to stay with her one Christmas, in addition to her family, so referring to it as a cottage was somewhat misleading.

[1] Made of red brick with a stucco trim, the house has five bays, two storeys, sash windows, and a central Doric porch with fluted columns and entablature with triglyphs.

[24] Kingsley wrote to the poet Philip Larkin in April 1969: "This is a bloody great mansion, in the depths of the country though only 15 miles from the centre, and with lots of room for you to come and spend the night.

[30] After 12 months at Sussex Tutors (a Brighton crammer) in 1967–1968, he passed six O-levels and 3 A-levels, and won an exhibition to Exeter College, Oxford,[31] graduating in 1971 with a congratulatory first in English.

[32] Martin lived at Lemmons until Christmas 1971, after which he started work at The Times Literary Supplement and moved to central London, visiting his father and Jane at weekends.

He shared a maisonette in or near Pont Street, SW1, with a friend, Rob Henderson,[33] who was the basis of Charles Highway in The Rachel Papers (1973), Gregory Riding in Success (1978), and Kenrik in The Pregnant Widow (2011).

There was a great sense of in-depth back-up, a cellar, a barrel of malt whisky, a walk-in larder: proof against snowstorm or shutdown.

I think it was that Christmas morning [1977], that all four Amises, with breakfast trays on their laps, watched Journey to the Centre of the Earth—then the visit to the pub, then the day-long, the week-long lunch.

[36]Kingsley wrote ten books at Lemmons, in his wood-panelled study on the ground floor, including The Green Man (1969), What Became of Jane Austen?

[40] Alexandra "Gully" Wells, step-daughter of the philosopher A. J. Ayer and Martin's girlfriend for about 10 years from 1969, said of Lemmons that "a more hospitable household would be impossible to imagine".

[45] The Day-Lewises moved into Lemmons in the spring of 1972 when Tamasin's father, the poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, was dying of cancer.

[7][9] Jane wrote: "Nobody was better at getting the utmost pleasure from the simplest things as Cecil: a bunch of flowers, a toasted bun, a gramophone record ... a piece of cherry cake, a new thriller ..."[47] He dedicated his final poem, "At Lemmons", to "Jane, Kingsley, Colin, Sargy": "I accept my weakness with my friends' / Good natures sweetening each day my sick room.

Kingsley expected her to do most of the cooking and domestic work, for the family plus assorted guests, as well as drive him around and sort out the finances and much of the gardening.

[22] Jane left the marriage in 1980 because she realised that Kingsley did not like her; her lawyer gave him a letter the day she was expected back from a health farm.