Francis Egerton Grosvenor (1883-1932), the 4th Baron Ebury, a descendant of the the first Baron who was the third son of the Duke of Westminster. He signed the Preface from his residence at the time, Red Heath, Croxley Green, now a private school. In it he talks about the pivotal moment when his family decided that they must sell Moor Park, their childhood country home due to the death of their father. Pevsner described Moor Park in Hertfordshire as the grandest eighteenth-century house in the county. It was designed by Sir James Thornhill for Benjamin Styles who made his fortune in the South Seas.

Pasted inside the front is a letter from Susan Buchan of Elsfield Manor, Oxford, who writes about some errors in the book and has made some annotations to the text in pencil. Susan Buchan (1882-1977) was a daughter of Norman de L’Aigle Grosvenor (son of the first Lord Ebury) and his wife Caroline Susan Theodora Stuart-Wortley (a granddaughter of the first Lord Wharncliffe), and a cousin of the Dukes of Westminster. She talks about her personal knowledge of her relatives at Moor Park. At the end of the book, she has drawn a family tree commencing with Robert, 1st marquess of Westminster (1767-1845). Provenance: with bookplate of John Lynch, Naimaster (1905-80). Pevsner, Sir Nikolaus ‘The Buildings of England’.