The Library Encounter

The grand ancestral library of Greystone Abbey was a magnificent, two-story cathedral of literature and maritime history. Constructed in the mid-eighteenth century of dark, carved English oak, its walls were lined with over thirty thousand leather-bound volumes, historic naval atlases, and original hand-drawn charts of the British Admiralty dating back to the reign of Queen Anne. A soaring stained-glass rose window at the south end cast jewel-toned pools of ruby,…