With news that houses are to be built on the former site of a 150-year-old manor, JANAKI MAHADEVAN talks to the last owner of the historic building.

Last Thursday, councillors approved the finalised plans for three houses, a flat and a garage to be built on land formerly housing the 19th Century manor The Marians.

The plot of land is thought to have been home to residential buildings from as early as the mid 19th Century with the first known occupant of the eight acre estate, in Barnet Lane, being Mrs Mason in 1855. The Marians was built in 1886.

Following the sale of the home to property developers in July last year, the house was knocked down to make way for new homes.

The last owner of The Marians, Arthur Sheridan, was five years old when his father Dr Vernon Arthur Sheridan and mother Ruth Eleanor bought the house.

Now living in Radlett, Mr Sheridan, 68, said: “My father never got the property properly registered in modern terms so when my wife and I were selling it we had to get a list of all the previous owners.”

Some of the previous owners included Arthur Rowlands, a jeweller in 1882, and Arthur Bernard Gill, an engineer who lived there for a year from 1917. It is also thought that at some time before the First World War the house was used as an ecclesiastical college.

Mr Sheridan — who in 1961, at 21, became the youngest councillor in the country when he was elected as a county councillor for the Elstree West Division — and his younger brother and sister enjoyed their time at the house before moving on to pursue their careers.

He said: “It was a very nice property in the early days during the 1950s and 1960s. There was a lovely garden and orchard and we kept horses and ponies because my mother was involved with showing and breeding them.”

The grounds include a tennis court built in 1956 as Mr Sheridan was a serious tennis player in his youth and even reached the junior Wimbledon championships. His sister, Vivien, became a vet and converted one of the out-buildings into a veterinary surgery.

Following the death of Dr Sheridan in 1990, Ruth Sheridan became the sole owner of the house until her death in November 2003.

Mr Sheridan added: “The property was far too big and in a poor state of repair — it would have cost a large amount of money to fix. If people were to live in a house of that size now they would either need domestic help or to be fully involved with the house themselves.

“My wife and I did try to sell it as a single unit and waited quite a long time in the hope that a school or other organisation would buy it, but unfortunately in today’s economic climate no one came forward. We were sad to see it pulled down.”