Property Before Winfield House
The first house on the site was Hertford Villa, the largest of the eight originally built in the park as part of John Nash's development scheme. Later the Georgian villa was known as St Dunstan's, because of the distinctive clock that hung in front of it, purchased by art collector Francis Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford when material from St Dunstan-in-the-West was auctioned off in 1829-30 prior to the church's demolition. Later occupants included newspaper proprietor Lord Rothermere and the American financier Otto Hermann Kahn. Kahn lent it during World War I to a new charity for blinded servicemen, which took the name of St Dunstan's. The villa was damaged by fire in the 1930s and was subsequently purchased by the American heiress Barbara Hutton, who demolished it.
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Famous quotes containing the words property and/or house:
“If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Happy will that house be in which the relations are formed from character; after the highest, and not after the lowest order; the house in which character marries, and not confusion and a miscellany of unavowable motives.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)