The property traces its roots back to 1742 when Finance Minister Nicolai Ahrentzen leased an area to the south of Ladegården to build a facility for bleaching of wax for candles which he supplied to the Royal Court.

[1] The buyer was Judge Military Prosecutor General Andreas Bruun, who acquired additional land in the area, closed the bleachery and converted the property into a summer retreat with 18 cows and a garden with a fishing pond.

After just a few years, the property changed hands again when it was purchased by Conrad Alexander Fabritius de Tengnagel, a prominent merchant and ship owner who also owned a town house in Christianshavn and Enrum at Vedbæk north of Copenhagen.

Over the next decades the estate changed hands several times and continued to grow through new acquisitions until reaching all the way from Rolighedsvej to Gammel Kongevej in the south.

The land where Rolighed was located, about 3.5 hectares, was sold to Københavns Sygehjem (literally "Copenhagen Sick Home"), which, after the 1853 Copenhagen cholera outbreak, was to provide care a respectable alternative to the poorhouse for chronically sick members of the middle class.