Snowshill Manor, a typical traditional Cotswold manor house, was bought by Charles Paget Wade (1883–1956), an eccentric architect and artist, whose wealth came from inherited sugar estates in St Kitts, in 1919. Between 1900 and 1940 he had acquired over 5,000 objects for which he is said to have never spent more than a pound on each. He bequeathed Snowshill and its motley collection to the National Trust leaving his motto: NEQUID PEREAT (‘Let nothing perish’) to be upheld. The paintings are mostly more curious than beautiful or valuable. Amongst his own views, real and imaginary, of Suffolk, Norfolk and the West Indies, feature an exceptionally signed-and-dated 'Still Life with a Basket of Plums and Peaches with a Cut Melon' by Jacques Linard (one other is known in the UK, at the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle), a compelling image of a Mater Dolorosa, attributed to Alessandro Allori, an 'Interior with a Woman, a Child and a Maidservant' by Richard van Bleeck, the son of an actor.