Isambard Kingdom Brunel to design Brunel Manor and its gardens to be his country home. He never saw the house or gardens finished, as he died before it was completed. Brunel, a heavy smoker, who had been diagnosed with Bright's disease (nephritis), suffered a stroke on 5 September 1859, just before the "Great Eastern" made her first voyage to New York. He died ten days later at the age of 53 and was buried, like his father, in Kensal Green Cemetery in London. He left behind his wife Mary and three children: Isambard Brunel Junior (1837–1902), Henry Marc Brunel (1842–1903) and Florence Mary
Marc Isambard Brunel Prince Albert visited. Although intended for horse-drawn traffic, the tunnel remained pedestrian only. In 1865 the East London Railway Company purchased the Thames Tunnel for £200,000 and four years later the first trains passed through it. Subsequently, the tunnel became part of the London Underground system, and remains in use today, as part of the East London Line of London Overground. The engine house in Rotherhithe was taken over by a charitable trust in 1975 and transformed into the Brunel Museum in 2006. After the completion of the Thames Tunnel, his greatest achievement, Brunel was in poor health. He never