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Nick Churton of Mayfair International Realty listens to the sound of silence just 35 minutes from Manhattan.

The southern side of Long Island, New York is a place of wonderful neighbourhoods, sandy beaches, country clubs, some great natural beauty and some very good real estate. It is an area of great contrasts and has something for everyone.  I was reminded of this when I visited 360 Longwood Crossing, Lawrence, New York – a very becoming house standing apart and overlooking the wide salt-water wildlife-filled marsh of Brosewere Bay.

The brochure shows an attractive shingle-clad home with a slate and gabled roof and deep veranda. But having been there I now know more. I know that the only thing I could hear in the garden was the whisper of the reeds in the adjacent reed beds. I also know that Queens is just about a mile away, that NYC is only 45 minutes’ commute, that JFK airport can be reached in half that time and it takes even less than that to arrive at the seemingly endless white beaches of the Long Beach barrier island. All of which makes the peaceful whispering of the reeds all the more amazing and wonderful.

This is certainly not a house for just anyone. The buyer of this home will value being within easy reach of whatever they desire in one of the greatest and most sophisticated cities on earth – including, no doubt, their livelihood. But he or she will also crave domestic privacy – not from walls or fences but from nature. Here the buyer can go swimming au naturel in the pool and the only whispering will be the reeds, not the neighbours.

This is a house for creative souls who display individuality in their homes as well as their lives. It is for people who love freedom and not uniformity. It is for artists at heart. The buyer could even save money – why bother owning a weekender when one has this?

This home is a rat-race release valve. It is a place where a hectic day job can be all but forgotten during precious recuperative hours. It is a restorative. All you have to do is listen to the reeds telling you so.