the very latest upholsterer-decorators could make it". It was described as "the most gaudy concern I ever saw" and "a vast pile of mongrel gothic which ... is a monument of wealth, ignorance and bad taste". To restore the gardens and grounds, Grosvenor employed John Webb, a pupil of William Emes, who had been the previous designer of the landscaping around the house. New terrace walls were created on the east side of the house. Belgrave Avenue, the approach to the house from the west, was levelled and drained, and 130,000 trees were planted along it. The paths along the approach, which was long, were made between and wide, so that they would be suitable for the use of carriages. On the east side of the house a serpentine lake was created on the near side of the River Dee. By the 1820s formal garden beds were becoming fashionable and William Andrews Nesfield was employed to design formal parterres around the house. He added more terracing, balustraded walls, and flower beds surrounded by box edging. For the London estate, Grosvenor created a "fashionable new residential quarter" near Buckingham House (later Buckingham Palace). He appointed Thomas Cundy as architect and surveyor, and Thomas Cubitt as builder. The entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states: "This urban development was to make the Grosvenors one of the richest families in Britain". He also bought more property in Cheshire, and elsewhere at Shaftesbury in Dorset, and Stockbridge in Hampshire. The family's London house had been in Millbank, but in 1806 Grosvenor bought a house in Upper Grosvenor Street and greatly extended it; this was to become Grosvenor House. He added an art gallery to the Park Lane side of the house in 1827, and in 1843 built a new entrance in Upper Grosvenor Street consisting of a Doric screen between large pedimented gateways that separated a cour d'honneur from the street in the Parisian manner. Personal interests Grosvenor continued the family's interests in art and horse racing. He added to the art collection; his acquisitions included four paintings by Rubens for which he paid £10,000, and he paid £100 for Gainsborough's The Blue Boy. To develop the facilities for horse racing, he expanded the Eaton Stud. The finest horse produced by the stud during Grosvenor's time was Touchstone. This horse won 16 of the 21 races for which it was entered, including