Blaise Castle [SEP] architect
, who bought it from Astry's descendents in 1762; he built the sham castle. Farr went bankrupt when ships he owned were blockaded during the American Revolutionary War, and the estate was bought in 1778 by Denham Skeate. Eleven years later he sold it to John Harford, a wealthy Bristol merchant and banker, who demolished the old house in 1789 and had the present two-storey Neoclassical Blaise Castle House built in 1796–1798, designed by William Paty. It is a square stone block with adjoining domestic offices which are faced
portfolio, including the Blaise Castle Estate at Henbury. This was originally property of Thomas Farr, but Farr went bankrupt in 1778 following the American Revolutionary War. The estate then changed hands a number of times until Harford's father eventually purchased the land and buildings.
John Harford the Elder had a plain but substantial house built and asked the landscape architect Humphry Repton to lay out the grounds.
Repton became a partner of John Nash, whom Harford commissioned to design a group of cottages, Blaise Hamlet, as homes for