to The National Trust; founding a preservation committee, they launched an appeal to purchase the property, with Horsfall agreeing that he would be willing to sell it to them for £3,100. The group sought to raise this amount, gaining the support of writers like Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, and John Masefield, and architects Edwin Lutyens, Giles Gilbert Scott, Herbert Baker, and Raymond Unwin, as well as the former Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. They asserted that "We realise that at the present time the public are interested in other and very different movements in architecture and industrial art. We are however confident that, for the sake of its association with the work of William Morris and his group, the importance of this house will be appreciated in the future, and its loss in this regard will be recognised as irreparable." By December 1934, the committee's appeal had only raised £550 and the Trust were unwilling to foot the rest of the bill. The committee returned the donations that had been offered. On learning of this, May Morris commented that "That beautiful house is fated to have bad luck, it seems!" The House was purchased by a local estate agent, Thomas Curtis Hills (c.1883–1957), in 1935. Aware of the threats posed to the house, he moved into it with his wife, Beatrice Nellie Foster. In 1941, amid the Second World War, the government's Assistance Board took control of the house's ground floor, using it as an office to aid those left homeless by The Blitz. Commenting on this situation, a visitor to the building, Prime Minister of New Zealand Peter Fraser, stated that "I think Morris would be pleased to know that a house of his is being used for such a purpose. The house is being devoted to the service of the people and Morris was for the people all the time." An air raid shelter was constructed in the House's gardens for the use of the Assistance Board's staff. After the war, the House had fallen into a poor state and the Hills were keen to sell it. In 1950, they unsuccessfully attempted to sell it to the National Trust and then the Labour Party, before offering it for £5,000 to anyone "willing to preserve it for the nation". The same year, it was designated a Grade I [listed building] by English Heritage. The couple moved out