Hyme House

The house was built in 1886; de László and his wife, heiress Lucy Guinness (3), lived there from 1921 to 1937. In 1938 the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross, a Catholic Religious Order, acquired Hyme House and later took over the villas at numbers 5 and 7. The Order linked the three villas into a girls' school, which operated up until 1985 (3). The house then became the Fitzjohn's Lodge Hotel (3).

In 1886 No.3 Fitzjohn's Avenue was built and was known as Hyme House. The house was built in the style of the Arts & Crafts movement, with a brick, tile-hung and terracotta facade with large bay windows, balconies, ornate pediments, decorative brickwork, carved brackets, terracotta gabling, feature chimneys and hand-crafted entrance porticos (3). The interiors of Hyme House and studio had oak flooring with high ceilings, elegant ceiling cornicing and panelled doors (4). The furniture was predominantly Italian, with Flemish tapestries and de László's paintings on the walls (4). Antiques included a 13th-century Sicilian chest, pieces by Auguste Rodin, and Louis XIV candlesticks and a…