In 1924, Sherwell sold Red House to Walter Scott Godfrey (1855–1936), the director of a wine and spirits merchant and an author on anti-theism who had been widowed two years previously. Of all the property's residents, he would live there for the shortest time, although carried out one of the largest alterations, by removing the dividing wall between the downstairs waiting room and bedroom to create a study-cum-library and inserted a porthole window between this library and the Pilgrims' Rest, which was designed by his son, the architect Walter Hindes Godfrey. He lived at the house with his youngest daughter and three domestic servants, however felt lonely at the Red House and found its upkeep too expensive. In 1927 an Australian, Alfred Herbert Horsfall (1871–1944), purchased the House. A medical doctor, Horsfall had served as a medic in the British Army during the South African War, before moving to Britain and becoming a lecturer for the Social and Political Education League and staunch apologist for the British Empire. In the stock market crash of the early 1930s, Horsfall lost much of his money. He was unsuccessful in selling the House in 1932.