Horsfall attempted to sell the house again in 1934, this time with Harrod's; he put forward an asking price of £4000. Many believed that the house would be demolished to make way for encroaching suburban development, so a campaign group emerged with the hope of preserving the house and donating it to The National Trust; founding a preservation committee, they launched an appeal to purchase the property, with Horsfall agreeing that he would be willing to sell it to them for £3100. The group sought to raise this amount, gaining the support of writers like Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, and John Masefield, and architects Edwin Lutyens, Giles Gilbert Scott, Herbert Baker, and Raymond Unwin, as well as the former Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.