You Know You Have Too Much Money When

You buy a house in another country, have it torn down, crated, shipped across the Atlantic, and rebuilt 3,600 miles from where it first stood. That is the story of Agecroft Hall, a 15^th Century Tudor estate originally constructed in Lancaster, England. By the early 1900’s, the estate fell into disrepair and was sold at auction to Thomas C. Williams, who had the house dismantled and rebuilt in Richmond, Virginia.

And that seems to be the entire available history of Mr. Thomas C. Williams. What happened after he bought the house, or how it subsequently became a museum, is nowhere to be found. What we do know, is that his timing was pretty terrible. He bought Agecroft in 1925, four short years before the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression. I wonder if such extravagances as importing houses had anything to do with the fact that the Agecroft Hall is no longer family owned. What might have been the William’s family misfortune accrues to our benefit, though, because now this authentic Tudor estate is open to the public, right here in the good old U.S. of A. No passport required.