1663



At twenty years old, Alice Crayford becomes mistress of Oakwood Grange, a house built by her father, and she begins her diary. The house remains in the ownership of one family for three and a half centuries, each generation faithfully recording details of their household in The House Book. Eventually, the family line dies out.



1985



Oakwood Grange has new owners. Janie Whittaker feels an unaccountable attachment to the old place from the very first visit and, inspired by The House Book, decides it's time she traced the estranged branch of her own family. But it's Janie's discovery of Alice's diary in amongst some old papers which provides a more interesting link between past and present and soon she's absorbed in Alice's world. Meanwhile, Janie can't help noticing one or two strange little occurrences in the house—even their foundling cat seems a bit odd—but none of this really fazes her.



It's true the witches' marks over the fireplace are a bit unsettling, but then belief in witches was commonplace in the seventeenth century and now, surely, everyone knows . . . there's no such thing as witchcraft?