Where Walton Manor had been secluded Baynton House was isolated. Surrounded by close-growing plantations which effect- ively hid it from the hamlet of East Coulston, it lay, large and rambling, in a cleft of the Downs which arose steeply about it. To one side, beyond its lawns and across a rutted lane, was a tiny grey stone church among moss-grown tomb- stones leaning askew. A melancholy silence brooded over the whole, broken only by the hoarse cawing of rooks above the tree-tops and the murmur of a stream which fed a lake in the grounds.

— Yseult Bridges, The Tragedy at Road-hill House,1955 p.28

Mrs Kent had a bed, bath-room & sitting room to herself at the other end of the house, only when in winter a fire was forbidden in her sitting room, she sat in the dining room with her 2 eldest daughters & the eldest boy when home & her youngest son to whom she was devotedly attached. Mr Kent and the governess occupied the library where Constance had her lessons but all generally met at meals.

— "The Sydney Document”

—The heritable character of passion—Revenge—Application of fore- going to Road murder—Reasons for detailing a history of living persons —Mr. Kent—His entrance into life—His marriage—Residence in London—Birth of children there—Appointment as Sub-inspector of Factories—High opinion entertained by the Government of Mr. Kent's fulfillment of his duties—Testimonial of magistrates—Its value—Re- moval to Sidmouth—Edward born there—His education—Love of the sea—Joins the West India Mail Packet Company—Wrecked at Bala- klava—Edward's letter describing his disaster—Promotion—Early death at the Havannah—First appearance of insanity in Mrs. Kent—Law of lunacy—Proposed establishment of a distinct profession of medical jurists —Other children born at Sidmouth—Their early death—Assignable cause of it—Popular suspicion with respect to it—Succeeding children born more healthy—Accounted for—Is "vox populi" the voice of truth? —Engagement of Miss Pratt as governess to Mr. Kent's children— Reasons for it—History of Miss Pratt—Constance—Her character when a child—Mr. Kent removes to Walton—Thence to Baynton—

— Joseph Stapleton, The Crime of 1860, p.v.