Construction
Wallace was living in Barking in 1871, but did not like the area. He leased 4 acres (16,000 m2) of land in Grays that included an old chalk pit. He decided to build a house on this land to his own specification. There was a nearby cement works and a supply of gravel on the site, so he chose to build the house in concrete. He employed Thomas Wonnacott of Farnham as his architect because he had experience in this new material. The grounds were laid out by Wallace himself. They included a serpentine drive from the road now known as Dell Road, (College Avenue did not exist when the house was built). He described the grounds as "a bit of a wilderness that can be made into a splendid imitation of a Welsh valley". Wallace earned the money to pay for the Dell from the natural history collections he made while in south-east Asia.
Read more about this topic: The Dell (Thurrock)
Famous quotes containing the word construction:
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