John Hedley built a grand house because he expected to live there with the woman he loved.
She cancelled the wedding just days before it was due to take place.
And still the flowers kept coming.
Phyllis Broughton was one of the celebrated Gaiety Girls of the late Victorian stage and was regarded as one of the great beauties of her day. Wealthy colliery owner's son John Hedley fell deeply in love with her and bought Longcroft at Hayes in Kent with marriage in mind.
But Phyllis broke off the engagement.
Longcroft remained empty, yet it was carefully maintained. Gardeners tended the grounds and, according to local history, flowers and produce from the estate were regularly sent to Phyllis for years.
The last gifts are said to have been sent shortly before her death.
Phyllis's own romantic life had plenty more twists. A later engagement to Viscount Dangan also ended, this time with Phyllis rejected. She successfully pursued a breach-of-promise settlement. Eventually, aged fifty-five, she married Margate doctor Robert Thomson.
John Hedley never married. When he died in 1937, eleven years after Phyllis, his will astonishingly still left a huge fortune to her - even though she had already died.
But it is the quieter detail that sticks in the mind.
A house prepared for a marriage that never happened. Gardeners still tending its grounds. And baskets of flowers travelling from it, year after year, to the woman who had said no.
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