Convent put famous Alfred Wallace house up for sale

THE FAMOUS house, built by the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, has been put up for sale.

According to the Land Registry, the house is owned by the Anglo-Hibernian province of the Congregation of La Sainte Union Des Sacre Couer based in Bath but has been part of the Convent for many years. It has a guide price of £1.5 million.

Alfred Russel Wallace, born in 1823, was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection, which prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species.

According to the according to the Wallace Fund, when Wallace returned from a specimen-collecting adventures in the tropics in 1870, he sought an appropriate place to live and to develop his research.

For this, he decided upon a an abandoned chalk pit in Grays.

Wallace and his family lived in the house, called “The Dell,” from 1872 until 1876, during which time Wallace wrote two books: On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism (1875) and The Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876).

According to the seller site:

“The Dell was built in 1872 as a large house, in Grays, on the instructions of eminent naturalist Alfred Wallace.
It was one of the earliest houses in Britain to be built in concrete. Courtesy of Wallace, there are plans and drawings of the house in the Natural History Museum, and the property bears a plaque with his name.

Wallace sold the property to William Hughes, founder of The Victoria Wine Company.

The Dell has survived as No. 25 College Avenue, has been a small school and for many decades as a Convent for the Sisters of La Sainte Union des Sacre-Coeurs.”

Alfred Russel Wallace is the subject of a BBC documentary series fronted by comedian Bill Bailey.