WELCOME "On behalf of my family I would like to extend a very warm welcome to Island Hall. I am the seventh generation of my family to live in this delightful early Georgian classical house that was first acquired by my great-great-grandfather Jacob Julian Baumgartner - a naturalised British citizen of Swiss birth. Island Hall remained a family home for a century and a half until the Second World War, when it was requisitioned and used by the WAAF and then by the RAF's Pathfinder Squadron. In common with many historic houses, things looked bleak after the war. It had suffered from its wartime use - with Nissen huts covering the garden. The local authority took over responsibility for the building, converting it under the Emergency Housing Act into 15 tiny flats, even using the huts themselves for accommodation. I saw the house myself for the first time in 1957, from the river, as a schoolboy on a boating party, and dreamed of owning and restoring it one day. At that time I knew nothing of the history of the house and its connections to my family. Twenty years later, during the 1977 Firemen's Strike, a fire broke out on the ground floor. This was brought under control, then broke out again during the night gutting the south wing, but luckily the main body of the house was left untouched, so there was no damage to any of the early Georgian panelling or to the fine oak staircase. At this point it was thought the house might even be demolished and I saw the house myself for the second time in 1979, in this dire state of near dereliction, but was pleased to find that it had just been acquired by Simon Herrtage, who carried out a major restoration of the structure back to its original 18th century design.