The Knowles children recall it as a magical place in which to grow up, with acres of space to roam. They helped in all aspects of the early years of rather amateurish historic house tourism: using a surplus World War II field telephone between the tour guide (often an "au pair" with a vivid imagination) and the ticket office, serving teas, and helping themselves to coins from the wishing well to buy ice-creams from Sumbler's, the butchers just outside the gates. "Many would remember Francis as a most excellent host. Particularly memorable, however, was his hospitality at his beautiful Elizabethan house at Avebury, where he and his wife, Ruth, entertained so many people"." Set against this background, remote from academic biology, he appeared to one of his colleagues as 'a fascinating man who would really have been more at home in the eighteenth century'. To another he gave proof that 'one could be both a distinguished scholar and a warm, vibrant person'.