Once upon a time there was a very large house called Green Hills. No one is entirely sure who built such an expansive home, but the pediment over the door is dated 1853. When the owners moved in, bringing with them their fine furniture, paintings, carpets and hiring a multitude of servants to cook and clean, the lady of the house looked beyond the tall stone walls, designed to keep all the danger out, to the wild untamed countryside where, far in the distance, she could just make out the ocean.
She pined for the misty hills of home, with their soft and constantly changing hues. So when her husband asked what name they should give their new estate, she smiled sadly and said, ‘Green Hills, my sweet. Green Hills.’
Over the years, the layout changed. Wings were closed off, rooms were built on and, eventually, a smaller dwelling was constructed to accommodate the lady and her husband when their offspring took over the big house.
Slowly, Green Hills became Greenhills and then, the family moved on. Perhaps the great-grandmother who could never quite settle in a foreign land eventually went back ‘home’. Who knows?
For several years Greenhills, a place of towering stone walls but no hills, stood silent and empty, dismissed as a ruin.
One day, though, its luck changed. A doctor happened to peer through its unlocked gates, push then open and see a house that could be rescued, restored, reinvented as a tranquil refuge for souls in need of a safe haven. For souls who found it too hard to inhabit the world outside its walls.
He spoke to some more doctors and, working together, they took the old house and carved large rooms into smaller ones: rooms for sleeping, meeting and eating, rooms where people said nothing at all, or spoke about everything they had been guarding for years.
Eventually the doctors decided that they needed more space and they turned their attention to the smaller house. It too became a refuge, a home, for young people, made up of rooms for sleeping, meeting, eating, rooms where nothing was said, or where everything that had lain hidden could come to light.
Typically, tales that start with ‘Once upon a time’ end with the words ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’ This will never be entirely true of Greenhills. Many of its stories will never end. Yet in these never-endings there can be new beginnings, new ways of living and new ways of seeing life.