Following the fire the garden ornaments were auctioned in the autumn of 1938 and the house was sold the following year to Mr Banks at a fraction of its cost. In 1954 the house was bought be an antique dealer from Straford-Upon-Avon. He stripped the house of anything of value and sold them. These items included; marble chimney-pieces, lead slates and timber from the roof, statues from the garden and the heavy plated glass from the conservatory.
Ruin rapidly overtook the structure, with trees growing up through the floors, and in the 1950s and 1960s it narrowly survived demolition and associated proposals for a motor racing circuit, caravan park and housing estate. The church might have been bodily removed to London, Whilst the Peseus and Andromeda fountain nearly ended up on a traffic island outside Worcester Cathedral. A building Preservation Order, however, provided vital protection in 1964, and in 1970 the house and surroundings were scheduled as an ancient monument. One the Department of the Environment had served a compulsory guardianship order in 1972, work to arrest further decay could begin – a task continued since 1984 by English Heritage.*
*From the English Heritage guidebook.
