[2] In October 1908, The Wind in the Willows was published as a novel for children featuring an array of anthropomorphic characters, including Rat (a water vole), Mole, Badger and Toad.

[8] He symbolises a decadent aristocracy that "squanders his inheritance [and is] indifferent to his house"; the weasels and stoats,which overrun the hall, are the (working) "class enemy"; while Badger, Rat and Mole are the "bourgeois intelligentsia" who alone can save the "Ancestral Home" and restore the social status quo.

[9] Toad Hall itself "dominates", and symbolises, the Arcadian pastoral landscape that is The Wind in the Willows, in the same relationship as Woburn Abbey or West Wycombe Park to their Reptonian parklands.

[10] Grahame's description of Toad Hall is sparse: "a handsome, dignified old house of mellowed red brick, with well-kept lawns reaching down to the water's edge".

These include: The house's title has also been an inspiration in the subsequent century: examples of Toad Hall are found in a 1930s mansion in Aiken, South Carolina by the architect Willis Irvin;[25] the de Menil residence designed by Charles Gwathmey in Amagansett, New York;[26] an estate in the Virgin Islands;[27] and a restaurant in Fantasyland at Disneyland Paris.