Buscot Old Parsonage, with its small walled garden, was built in 1703 of Cotswold stone next to the banks of the Thames. It is near to Buscot Park, the Oxfordshire home to Lord Faringdon’s fine art collection, and is on the estate given in 1949 by Ernest E. Cook (1865–1955), with the remainder of the estate being bequeathed later. The house is let furnished to citizens of the USA engaged in literary, artistic or academic studies, according to the will of Mr Peter Francis Carew Stucley (1909–1964). Stucley collected contemporary works in the 1950s and 1960s from dealers such as the Piccadilly Gallery and Leicester Galleries in London. Notable examples are John Keith Vaughan’s ‘Sandypits Farm’ (1961) and George Hammond Steel’s ‘Essex Wood, Summer’ (1951). The group of flower paintings that adorn the Outer Hall are by the Czech Cecilia Sternberg, née Countess von Auguste Cecilia Diana Theodora van Reventlow-Criminil (1908–1983), known for her autobiography ‘The Journey’ (1977) – memoirs of a faded European aristocracy. She was the mother of a recent tenant, the interior designer Diana Sternberg, who herself has been able to return to Castolovice, a castle in Prague restituted back to her family in 1992.