in 1706 the Sayes Court estate was held in trust for his grandson, Sir John Evelyn, Baronet, as all his own male children had predeceased him. As well as almost 62 acres around Sayes Court itself, the estate comprised 159 tenements, the Red House on the site of the later navy victualling yard, a wet and dry dock afterwards called Deadman's Dock, and a water-mill. 18th century After Evelyn at the turn of the 18th century the estate was quickly broken up. According to Daniel Lysons writing in 1796, the Sayes Court manor house was almost entirely demolished in 1728, and the remainder converted into a workhouse. However Thomas Milton's 1753 plan of Deptford Dockyard shows the house, as the "Poore house", with still a similar footprint to that on John Evelyn's plan of 1653. Victorian era It remained the St Nicholas parish workhouse from 1759 to 1848. In 1852 it was used as a penal transportation depot, and in 1853 it was a factory for transportee clothing. In 1856 the whole site was sold to the Admiralty. In 1869, on the closing of the dockyard, William John Evelyn, a descendant of John Evelyn, purchased back from the Government as much of the site of Sayes Court as was available. By 1876 he was turning some into a recreation ground for his Deptford tenants; all plants and turf being brought from Wotton. By 1877 a portion of the old gardens had been secured, four of these remaining attached to the old house, which in 1881 he made into almshouses. The public garden and playground was about in extent. It had been carefully laid out with grass, plants, and edged with flowers and shrubs. In part it was planted with trees, and intersected by broad and level walks. In the centre of the ground was a bandstand; and in the north-west corner there was a large neoclassical building, formerly the Dockyard's Admiralty Model house, which was intended to serve as a museum and library, under the management of the Goldsmiths' Company. The part played in the formation of the National Trust In 1884 W. J. Evelyn approached Octavia Hill with the suggestion that the garden should become publicly owned and offering the hall which could be used as a museum, but there was as yet no organisation with the necessary legal powers for holding the property for permanent preservation. Robert Hunter