Nymans

[4] In the late nineteenth century, Ludwig Ernest Wilhelm Leonard Messel (1847–1915), a member of a German Jewish banking family, settled in England and bought the Nymans estate, a house with 243 hectares (600 acres) on a sloping site overlooking the picturesque High Weald of Sussex.

There he set about turning the estate into a place for family life and entertainment, with an Arts and Crafts-inspired garden room where topiary features contrast with new plants from temperate zones around the world.

Ludwig's brother Alfred Messel, already a well-known architect in Germany, drew up the plans; construction work was carried out by local builders.

[7] Ludwig's son Colonel Leonard Messel succeeded to the property in 1915 and, at the request of his wife Maud, replaced the German-style wood-beam house with a picturesque mock-medieval stone manor, designed by Sir Walter Tapper and Norman Evill in a mellow late Gothic/Tudor style.

He and his wife Maud (daughter of Edward Linley Sambourne) extended the garden to the north and subscribed to seed collecting expeditions in the Himalayas and South America.