Under Head Keeper Mr Martin, on a single day in 1887, five guns between them bagged 580 pheasant, 4 partridge, 16 hares and 24 rabbits. Eversley's interest in agriculture was undiminished. He served as President of the Royal Agricultural Society of England in 1862 (the year after Prince Albert, who had died in office). A model home farm, today's Home Farm, was built at Heckfield Place, with a state-of-the-art dairy to supply the manor house. Lord Eversley invested in subsoil draining on estate farms and enjoyed livestock breeding. His Smithfield Show entry of 1851, an 'improved Heckfield Pig' was described simply as 'astonishing'. Heckfield Place remained a focus for the wider Shaw Lefevre family until Lord Eversley died, aged 94, on 28 December 1888. His daughter remained at Heckfield Place for a few years, but the Trustees put the estate up for sale in 1895. The Walpole family Colonel Horace Walpole (1849–1919) bought the Heckfield Place estate by private treaty in July 1895. Walpole was a four-times great-nephew of the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, but the illegitimate son of the 4th Earl of Orford as a result of his affair with Lady Susan Hamilton. As such, Col Walpole was barred from inheriting the title, but on his father's death, in December 1894, he inherited considerable wealth and personal effects, enabling him to buy Heckfield Place. Improvements were made by Col Walpole to the house, including the installation of electricity, redigging the drains, and the building of a brick tower near the walled gardens, to distribute water pumped from a nearby spring, to the house, cottages and gardens. Walpole and his wife Pauline (née Langdale, 1858–1944) had two daughters, Dorothy and Maude. Until the outbreak of war in 1914, life at Heckfield Place continued much as it had, the seasons punctuated by open gardens, shooting days, horse-racing and fox-hunting. The Walpoles were a Catholic family, and the contents of Heckfield Place included an extraordinary collection of Stuart portraits. Lord Eversley's erstwhile conservatory was converted to a chapel, with a priest from Douai Abbey leading mass on Sundays, alternately with neighbouring Bramshill House. When Walpole died in 1919 he left the house to his eldest daughter Dorothy (1895–1977). The same year she married Major Austin Scott Murray (1881–1943); they had one daughter, Anne. Dorothy Scott Murray steered Heckfield Place through the difficult years of the twentieth century. She sold a large