After his father died in 1967, Sassoon inherited and occupied his father's large country house, Heytesbury House at Heytesbury, Wiltshire. He found it much neglected and worked to restore it, and also battled unsuccessfully to stop a planned A36 bypass from going through the park of the house; in the process, he sold many of his father’s papers to raise additional funds. The southern part of the park was subject to a compulsory purchase order in 1985 to allow construction of the bypass, separating the house from its cricket field and requiring a new entrance to be made from the west. He sold the house in 1996 after a serious fire and moved to a smaller property in the nearby village of Sutton Veny; but spent part of the year on Mull, where he had inherited his mother's property Ben Buie on her death in 1973.