From 1919 to 1955, it was owned by Alfred Ezra who was President of the Avicultural Society — he assembled a collection of rare birds and animals on the estate — in 1939 it housed the last known pink-headed ducks in the world. It was then owned by Hannah Weinstein and chosen for films and television series including The Adventures of Robin Hood.
History
Charles Buxton, brewer, philanthropist and politician, was also an amateur architect.[1] Having rented a range of properties around the growing village of Weybridge in the 1850s, he purchased the site for Foxwarren Park in 1855.[1] He was heavily involved in the design of the new house, working with Frederick Barnes, known more for his designs for railway stations, particularly in Norfolk. The style is described as "harsh Victorian Gothic".[2]
The house was acquired by Alfred Ezra in 1919, who owned it until his death in 1955. He was an enthusiastic breeder of birds and created a large private collection of rare birds and animals on the estate. From in 1939 the journal Forest and Outdoors praised it as "probably the finest (private zoo) in the world"; in which state it had been since 1920 and remained so until the following year.[10][11] It hosted the known last pair of pink-headed ducks.[12]
The house's elaborate decorations and antiques may be those being compared to those of the subject house of Henry James' novel, The Spoils of Poynton:[19]
...out of a Philistine, a tasteless, a hideous house; the kind of house the very walls and furniture of which constitute a kind of anguish for such a woman as I suppose the mother to be. That kind of anguish occurred to me, precisely, as a subject, during the two days I spent at Fox Warren...
^"Mr. Ezra's hobby is his private zoo. It is probably the finest one in the world.", Forest and Outdoors, 35: 117, 1939
^Robert J. Hoage, William A. Deiss, ed. (1996), New Worlds, New Animals: From Menagerie to Zoological Park in the Nineteenth Century, JHU Press, p. 148, ISBN9780801853739
