Labours of love
THE last time Grade II-listed Lord’s Wood, near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, appeared on the open market was in 1973, when an article in COUNTRY LIFE (November 15, 1973) was curiously dismissive of the architectural merits of the handsome Lutyens-style house. It was built in 1899 for the artist Mary Sargant-Florence, a prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group, whose daughter, Alix, married James Strachey, youngest brother of one of the group’s founders, Lytton Strachey.
The opening paragraph reads: ‘The house would hardly merit a second look as a piece of architecture; you can see dozens similar in the millionaires’ belt north of Regent’s Park, or in the plushier interstices between the South Coast resorts. But as the contents have been dispersed, and as the house
