In 1927, Mary Bonham-Christie paid £125,000 for Brownsea Island in Dorset and began turning the private estate into a refuge where wildlife could flourish away from the bustle of human society. At 62, she withdrew from the social life associated with the island, moved into the Agent’s House on the quay and increasingly kept people away from her property. For the next 34 years, until she died in 1961, she lived reclusively on Brownsea while allowing much of the island’s landscape to become wilder.
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