Balls Park in Hertford is a Grade I Listed mid-17th-century house. The estate and house are set in over 63 acres of parkland which is listed Grade II on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. The estate and house has been claimed to have been the inspiration for some of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, which is set in Hertfordshire, however the only citation to this is a sales ad in a newspaper. History of the site Balls Park takes its name from its owner, Simon de Ball, a burgess of Hertford in 1297. By the reign of Elizabeth I, it was owned by William Henmarsh, whose only child, Jane, married Richard Willis, a Cambridgeshire landowner and barrister; their children included Thomas and Richard, each created a baronet for service to King Charles I. Thomas, the eldest son and heir, sold Balls Park to Sir John Harrison, a wealthy financier, and customs official, who constructed the present house between 1637 and 1640, possibly to the designs of Nicholas Stone, the king's master-mason. The building is designed in the so-called Artisan Mannerist style, similar to several other Hertfordshire houses of the same date but shows purer classical traits which suggest metropolitan influences. Several later phases of remodelling can be traced stylistically to changes initiated by Harrison's son Richard Harrison and his grandson Edward Harrison, who had served in the colonial government of the East India Company. In 1759 the house was left by George Harrison to his niece Etheldreda Townshend whose husband, Charles, was estranged. She became a society hostess of some note. In this way, the house passed to the family of the marquesses Townshend of Raynham in Norfolk, and so became a secondary home, though favoured by Lord John Townshend, who initiated further changes, possibly roofing over the courtyard as a saloon or atrium in the early 19th century. In the 1880s, it was let to the Faudel-Phillips family, who purchased it outright in 1901 and made further changes. The estate offices and surviving stable block were built in 1902. In the early 1920s Sir Benjamin Faudel-Phillips commissioned the Scottish architect Sir Robert Lorimer to enlarge the house, by removing a series of service buildings and constructing a new west wing, mirroring the form of the mansion. The coach house was also remodelled at the same time. In May 1940, Sir Winston