Purchasing a plot of land in what at the time was the village of Upton in Kent, he employed his friend Webb to help him design and construct the house, financing the project with money inherited from his wealthy family.

In 2003, the National Trust purchased the property, undertaking a project of conservation and maintaining it as a visitor attraction with an accompanying tea room and gift shop.

[6] For Morris, the Middle Ages represented an era with strong chivalric values and an organic, pre-capitalist sense of community, both of which he deemed preferable to his own period.

[7] He was heavily influenced by the writings of art critic John Ruskin, being particularly inspired by his chapter "On the Nature of Gothic Architecture" in the second volume of The Stones of Venice.

[9] At Oxford, Morris became the best friend of fellow undergraduate Edward Burne-Jones; they had a shared attitude to life and a keen mutual interest in Arthurianism.

[10] Having passed his finals and been awarded a BA in 1856, Morris began an apprenticeship with the Oxford-based Gothic revival architect George Edmund Street in January 1856.

Morris designed and commissioned furniture for the flat in a Medieval style, much of which he painted with Arthurian scenes in a direct rejection of mainstream artistic tastes.

[17] They were married in a simple ceremony held at St Michael at the North Gate church in Oxford on 26 April 1859, before honeymooning in Bruges, Belgium.

[19] He wanted it to be situated in a rural area that was not far from London,[20] and chose to search in Kent because it was his favourite county; he particularly enjoyed its geographical mix of large open spaces with small hills and rivers, favourably contrasting it to the flat expanse of his native Essex.

[23] Morris would likely have been pleased that Upton was close to the track that pilgrims followed to Canterbury Cathedral during the Middle Ages, and would also have had the opportunity to visit the ruins of the Medieval Lesnes Abbey which were around three miles away.

[29] The servants' quarters were larger than in most contemporary buildings, reflecting the embryonic ideas regarding working class conditions which would lead Morris and Webb to become socialists in later life.

[27] The house lacked any applied ornamentation, with its decorative features instead serving constructional purposes, such as the arches over the windows, and the louvre in the open roof over the staircase.

[34] Rosseti termed it "a real wonder of the age ... which baffles all description",[35] while Morris biographer Fiona MacCarthy described it as "the ultimate Pre-Raphaelite building".

"[34] Later owners of the property, Edward and Doris Hollamby, described Red House as Webb and Morris' attempt to "apply Gothic principles to domestic architecture without archaeological imitation".

[58] In the dining room, Morris planned to decorate the walls with a series of embroidered female heroines, based in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women.

[59] Around the walls of the drawing room, Morris had wanted a mural featuring a series of scenes from the fifteenth-century Middle English romance of Sir Degrevant.

[57] Commenting on the designs being introduced by his friend, in February 1862 Burne-Jones wrote that "Top [i.e. Morris] thrives through bandy, and is slowly making Red House the beautifullest place on Earth.

[66] Their stained glass windows proved a particular success in the firm's early years as they were in high demand for the surge in the Neo-Gothic construction and refurbishment of churches, many of which were commissioned by the architect George Frederick Bodley.

[71] It has been suggested that Burne-Jones may also have been loath to move from London at the time because his artistic career was becoming increasingly successful, and most of his contacts within the art world were in the city.

[72] Morris was deeply disappointed with this, writing to Burne-Jones: "As to our palace of art, I confess your letter was a blow to me at first, though hardly an unexpected one: in short I cried, but I have got over it now; of course I see it from your point of view".

[72] Being north-facing, the interior of the house was cold during winter, which aggravated Morris' various medical conditions, and its isolated location made it difficult for doctors to visit.

Holme had become prosperous through a woollen business in Bradford before expanding into the Asian goods trade and by the 1880s he was employed as a buyer for the Liberty department store.

[84] He also contributed to the development of the building by encouraging visitors to scratch their signatures into the window panes on the screen dividing the entrance hall from the gallery with either a diamond ring or glass-scratching implement.

[87] In 1924, Sherwell sold Red House to Walter Scott Godfrey (1855–1936), the director of a wine and spirits merchant and an author on anti-theism who had been widowed two years previously.

Of all the property's residents, he would live there for the shortest time, although he carried out one of the largest alterations, by removing the dividing wall between the downstairs waiting room and bedroom to create a study-cum-library and inserted a porthole window between this library and the Pilgrims' Rest, which was designed by his son, the architect Walter Hindes Godfrey.

We are however confident that, for the sake of its association with the work of William Morris and his group, the importance of this house will be appreciated in the future, and its loss in this regard will be recognised as irreparable.

[100] The couple moved out of the building in early 1951, and it was left empty for over a year; it was purchased for £3,500 by Richard "Dick" Toms (1914–2005) and Edward "Ted" Hollamby (1921–1999) in 1952.

[101] Both architects working for the London County Council, Toms and Hollamby had a keen interest in Morris and embraced his socialist ideals, being members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the British-Soviet Friendship Society.

[103] In 1953, the newly founded William Morris Society held its inaugural meeting at Red House, subsequently holding a garden party there in 1960 to commemorate its centenary.

It was believed that it resembled the joint work of Morris, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Siddal, and Ford Madox Brown; as a result, the building's property manager James Breslin described the mural as being "of international significance".