Holding out for a hero

WRITING in Country Life (April 3/10, 1997), the magazine’s former Architectural Editor the late Giles Worsley referred to stately Grade I-listed Trafalgar Park, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, as ‘the Flying Dutchman of the property world, endlessly seeking an owner and being sold on while the fabric slowly decayed’. The fine country house built by John James of Greenwich in 1733 for City grandee Sir Peter Vandeput was nevertheless described as ‘an estate agent’s dream, a house that always seemed to come back on the market’.

Sir Peter died in 1748 and, four years later, Standlynch Park and its surrounding estate were bought by William Young, later Governor of Dominica, and sold by him to Henry Dawkins