The house was built in 1898, on the site of a thirteenth-century monastery, by Sir Frank Crisp, a successful City of London solicitor, microscopist and horticulturalist well known for his eccentricities. Harrison described Crisp as a cross between Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney. While compiling Harrison's autobiography, I, Me, Mine, in the late 1970s, Derek Taylor observed that Harrison frequently talks as if [Crisp] were still alive. Clean-up work during the first few months at Friar Park unearthed various legacies of Crisp's time there, such as stone and wood engravings containing whimsical homilies, some of which the Salesian nuns had concealed or painted over. The 10 acres of Crisp's formal gardens were so overrun with weeds that Harrison and his friend from the Hare Krishna movement, Shyamasundar Das, used World War II-era flamethrowers to clear some of the land. Among the garden features was a series of tiered lakes connected by tunnels, to the south-east of the house, and an Alpine rock garden topped by a 100-foot replica of the Matterhorn, to the north-west.