WALPOLE HOUSE 
charming garden, in order to rescue it from the fate which 
threatens all old houses in unfashionable districts. 
For which of us does not recall some such mansion in one of 
the outlying districts around the metropolis? A house that has 
obviously seen better days, and is still striving to hold up its head 
above its plebeian, or upstart neighbours. We have all passed 
such in the motor-’bus or the tram; and, through the bars of its 
wrought-iron gates, have had glimpses of green-sward and spread- 
ing cedars. The big board set up above the high brick walls of 
the garden, announces that “this desirable residence, standing 
in its own ground—with coach house, and stabling,”’ and so forth, 
‘is for sale.” Fifty or sixty years ago maybe, it was a fine country 
house; but the town, and the shabby side of it—had crept up, 
elbowed it, and finally passed it by, leaving it derelict. For some 
time it struggled bravely against its impending fate, becoming a 
hospital, or mdustrial school; or else an institution for the blind, 
the halt, and the lame ; or it was turned to account as local muni- 
cipal offices—but factory or board-school hemming it in, its situation 
became too noisy, so that ere long a firm of housebreakers was 
called in to pull it down. And though reconstruction followed 
disintegration, it was that of the speculative builder, who put up 
a tall, ugly, tenement building for factory hands, on its site. And 
when, in a year or two, we passed that way again—the cedars had 
disappeared, the oaks and the elms were felled, and a double row 
of workmen’s cottages stood where once was a fair avenue! Alas! 
for the house that had once been a home whence may have 
radiated gracious influences and generous impulses, whose walls 
were storied, could we but have read them; alas! for the tide of 
fashion set the other way and left it stranded ! 
And the end of Walpole House would have been much the same, 
had it not been for the beneficent intervention of Sir John Thorny- 
croft. : 
Just as Lieutenant-Colonel Shipway, by his spirited action 
saved Hogarth’s country house from demolition, by purchasing 
it and presenting it to the Middlesex Urban District Council, so 
Sir John Thornycroft at an opportune moment, bought Walpole 
House lest it should be turned to objectionable uses. 
He did so none too soon, for though the Mall lies as it were, in 
a sort of backwater, away from the traffic on the high road to 
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