Previous Houses
The name 'Polesden' is thought to be Saxon. The first house was built here by 1336. Anthony Rous bought the estate in 1630 and rebuilt the medieval house. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the poet and playwright, bought the house in 1804.
The house at one time belonged to Sir Francis Geary but his Polesden Lacey was demolished when Joseph Bonsor bought the estate and commissioned Thomas Cubit to build anew. Bonsor died in 1835, and the house passed to his son who, in 1853, sold the estate to Sir Walter Rockcliff Farquhar, who held it until his death in 1902. The estate was then purchased by Sir Clinton Edward Dawkings, a career civil servant, who commissioned Ambrose Poynter, architect son of Sir Edward Poynter P.R.A., to build the greater part of the present house. Sir Clinton, however died shortly after its completion. The estate was then bought, in 1906, by William McEwan, for Captain the Honourable Ronald Greville and his wife, the former Margaret Anderson, William McEwan's stepdaughter.
Read more about this topic: Polesden Lacey
Famous quotes containing the words previous and/or houses:
“I believe that there was a great age, a great epoch when man did not make war: previous to 2000 B.C. Then the self had not really become aware of itself, it had not separated itself off, the spirit was not yet born, so there was no internal conflict, and hence no permanent external conflict.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don’t know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God’s curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wifes and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.”
—Anthony Henley (d. 1745)