The most ambitious, and indeed one of the largest Victorian country houses, was Bearwood House near Wokingham, Berkshire, built 1865–74 for the owner of "The Times" newspaper, John Walter. Nikolaus Pevsner describes it as "the climax country mansions, and in its brazen way one of the major Victorian monuments of England" and "as far as scale is concerned, and the disregard for what we pygmies would call domestic comfort, Bear Wood is indeed nearer to Blenheim than to our poky villas"