We now know it as a hotel and some will remember it as ‘home’ during the Stamford High School terms when it became a boarding house, but this is how Lady Anne’s House started life.
“In the early ‘eighties workmen were busy at the top of St. Martin’s turning three houses into one and building on at the back. The result was Lady Anne’s House. There were all sorts of rumourrs (sic) during the building operations. One was that Baron Rothschild was coming there to live. In the end, it turned out to be the Earl of Rosslyn – the fourth earl, with his stately wife and beautiful daughters. They would all come to church on a Sunday morning, giving us all something to look at. He was a fine, handsome man with a monocle and waxed moustache. In the winter he wore a coat with enormous sable collar and cuffs, each cuff as deep as a lady’s muff. he walked into church with a magnificent air, sat down and made his devotions into his glossy silk hat, which he held in his hand the while (we used to whisper ‘He’s counting them’). Then, having deposited his had, he stood up, fixed his eye-glass and gazed deliberately all over the church before settling down. He always joined very heartily in the service, as though he thoroughly enjoyed it.
It was said that he was a man given to language more forcible than polite. Once he was entertaining a dignitary of the church, when something annoyed him and he started to curse with his customary fluency. Suddenly he stopped and apologized, excusing himself on the grounds that he always called a spade a spade.
‘Indeed,’ said the cleric dryly, ‘I should have thought you would call it a damned agricultural implement.'”
The Stamford Mercury, 13th May, 1938.