Bleak House sits just off Palmetto Road, surrounded by crab grass lawns fringed with trees and palms, and overlooking the North Shore.Today the 300-year-old house looks remarkably modern, bright and airy with a cheerful ambience.It’s been renamed Tynes Bay House and is home to the Child Development Programme, a place that bustles with caring professionals who work with children and their parents.But it was not always the case. There have been two murders associated with the house.War-time censor Margaret Stapleton was killed after leaving a dinner party at Bleak House and in the early 1970s, Police Commissioner George Duckett was shot there.But between these two tragic events, the Mair family boarded a ship from England for Bermuda, where they made their new home in 1957.Both parents were doctors and came to work in the infant public health system.They brought with them their sons Michael and Geoffrey, and daughter Zoe.For Michael, who was still in primary school, this was to be a formative experience.He now has grown-up children of his own and returned to Bermuda recently, bringing his wife to visit his old home in Devonshire.The couple was invited for tea by the staff of the clinic, who all gathered to meet Dr Mair and to hear his memories of his childhood at Bleak House.“I have been hankering to come back all this time,” he said. “The first thing I wanted to see when I got off the plane was this house.”Dr Mair’s mother, Audrey Stevenson, was a public health doctor mostly working for the Island’s schools. His father, Bernard Mair, carried out the first mass screening for tuberculosis in Bermuda.Dr Mair has followed in his parents’ footsteps and is today an eye surgeon in Timaru, New Zealand.“My mother got interested in social welfare, and she was shocked at the condition of people here,” he said.“She was the first person to check on the children in foster care some of the foster mothers were looking after 30 children“They were very poor, barefooted, and she tried to help with that. I remember there was a problem at the old ‘Incubator’ on the North Shore”.Dr Mair recalled that structure as a large flat-roofed building in a state of disrepair that once housed people with very low incomes or no income.While it was very poor, he said: “I was impressed by the love shown to the kids.”The Mair family lived in Bermuda from 1957 to 1960. “They were important years for me because I came from England,” he said, comparing his life here to the island-set novel ‘Lord of the Flies’.“We were English school boys who had arrived on an island. We were put into Saltus Primary School, which was full of boys from the American base here nothing like English school boys. We got it in the neck.“We were nothing like American children or Bermudian children.He recalled the old tracks put in place for the railway that once ran through the area, before the days when Palmetto Road was built.“We used to cycle back and forth from school,” he said. “There were cows in the fields along the way and abandoned houses.”Dr Mair explained that the British Army had pulled out just a couple of years earlier.“It was a feeling of faded glory of the Empire having just withdrawn, and the Americans had moved in,” he said.Convertible cars with fringe tops were a common sight then. The lyrical music of The Talbot Brothers was frequently heard in evenings out on the town.“Bermuda was still a paradise then we used to go to those sorts of things quite often.”Long summer days were spent by the water’s edge.His parents also enjoyed their first two years in Bermuda, making friends and socialising frequently, throwing parties at Bleak House.“I have a feeling of great nostalgia for Bermuda,” Dr Mair said.The house itself was a source of remarkable experiences.“This house, Bleak House, is more than 300 years old. And the downstairs was a slave quarters. Evidently there was a stairway leading to the downstairs, but it has been blocked off.”He did manage to find his way into the dark basement area, where he found an old lantern. “I have it still,” he said.There were also a couple of “spooky experiences”.“There was a man there [at the front of the house]. He looked a bit odd. I asked: ‘Who are you?’ and he said: ‘I stay here.’ I asked: ‘Why are you here?’ and he said: ‘I can’t leave.’“I remember him definitely telling me he was tortured. He said the downstairs of the house was used as an internment centre, but he couldn’t leave. He was quite an unsettled sort of person; he didn’t look at all well.”In the aftermath of that experience he has come to feel that he had an encounter with a ghost. “I think I was the only one who met this character,” he said.“He seemed fairly ordinarily dressed he struck me as being in his 40s.”Some members of the staff at the centre also report having seen and felt the presence of ghosts in the house, and some quite regularly.His magical memories led him to build his house in New Zealand along a similar design to Bleak House.“It’s a beautiful concept. A long veranda and sea view. I wanted to recreate this house but with central heating and solar panels!”That the house is now a place where children come every day for an array of support programmes to enhance their development, he said: “It’s a fine use.“I am very pleased to see that the house is still alive and I’m very pleased to see it’s got such a purpose.”