By the end of the 18th century the elder John Scandrett Harford was a wealthy landowner, and a staunch Quaker.

The estate then changed hands a number of times before John Harford the elder purchased the land and buildings.

[5] John Harford the Elder had a plain but substantial house built and asked the landscape architect Humphry Repton to lay out the grounds.

Repton became a partner of John Nash, whom Harford commissioned to design a group of cottages, Blaise Hamlet, as homes for his retired servants.

The estate descended to his nephew John Battersby Harford, who remodelled the house in the Italianate style in 1859 as Falcondale.

[5] Maria Edgeworth claimed that the main character in More's popular novel Coelebs in Search of a Wife was modeled on the younger Harford.

Burgess mentioned his 'projected college for clerical education in South Wales,' although at this time 'he did not appear to be sanguine in the hope of speedily realising the plan.'