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 and a cannon factory. No official records exist of the projects that he carried out in New York, as it seems likely that the documents were destroyed in the New York Draft Riots of 1863. In 1798, during a dinner conversation, Brunel learnt of the difficulties that the Royal Navy had in obtaining the 100,000 pulley blocks that it required each year to fit out its ships. Each of these was being made by hand. Brunel quickly produced an outline design of a machine that would automate the production of pulley blocks. He decided to sail to England and put