The story of the House and its occupiers begins in the Great Hall and provides a magnificent journey into the times and lives of people who made it into the unique place that it is today. 

Built by former Lord Mayor of London, Sir Nicholas Rainton, in 1632 the House stands on the edge of London and is important to understanding the growth of the Capital City and of the life and times of the merchant classes who established London as a major centre for worldwide trade. The House itself has been changed and reworked by a number of owners who lived there, however, many architectural features remain from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.