Spot the Frippet: mansion.

Some of the new flats being built in the cities of the Far East are the size of a parking space. I suppose they must be cozy, and they are by all accounts ingeniously designed, but they can't have the visual impact of a mansion.  

Bletchley Park, England, photo by DeFacto

A mansion would be too big for me, personally - how could one find excuses to put off self-invited guests? - but what fun it is to imagine what they're like inside:

The Haunted House (Die Geisterhaus) photo by Harald Hoyer

 and what fun, too, to be scornful of some of the architecture:

photo by Stilfehler - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88562155

Come to think about it, I lived in mansion, once. Well, in one room of it. It was Tudor, with a Georgian wing. There were holes in the floor of my room covered up by the ancient lino, so that when I got out of bed in the mornings I would sink down three inches towards the ground floor. The bathroom was freezing, too. 

But still, it's fun to look.

The Burwell House, Minnesota. Photo by Ashwin Asokan

Isn't it!

This mansion was called, believe it or not, Hope End.

Spot the Frippet: mansion, This word comes from the Old French from the Latin word mansio, which means a remaining, from mansus, which means dwelling, from manēre, to stay.