Treasurer's House was once the seat of the church official responsible for the treasure of York Cathedral. It was rescued between 1897 and 1900 by Lieutenant Colonel Francis 'Frank' William Green (1861–1954), the grandson of Edward Green (1799–1865), a successful engineer and industrialist of Wakefield, who made a fortune from a device called 'Green's Fuel Economiser'. He gave it, complete with its very varied collections in 'period rooms', to the National Trust in 1930.
The finest of the indigenous pictures by far is 'A Dutch Kitchen Scene' by Joachim Beuckelaer. Frank Green himself was painted as a young man by the Italian-born Russian society painter, Paolo Troubetzkoy (1864–1936).