The billionaire Foxtons founder, who is rumoured to live on the world’s most expensive street, also owns a sprawling 17th century mansion, which is almost as long as Buckingham Palace. Jon Hunt snapped up Heveningham Hall, the Grade I listed building in 1994 after it fell into disrepair in 1981 following the fallout of its original owners, the Vanneck family.

Artist Royston Jones, 77, was adopted by the Honourable Lady Aitken, and lived in the decadent hall throughout his childhood. So inspired by the Athenian-style decor, Jones has now converted the interior of his ordinary terraced house in Swansea to mimic the lofty, high-ceilinged rooms of his first home. He still speaks fondly of the building now. “It’s enormously grand. It’s longer than Buckingham Palace and it stands in the middle of the countryside with a great lake in the valley,” Jones told the BBC. Heveningham is in fact 79 metres long, according to Country Houses of the UK, just short of Buckingham palace’s 108 metres.

Jones said his passion for art and interiors stems from his visits to grand estates across west Wales and to Heveningham Hall in Suffolk. Five years after buying the ordinary looking terraced house in Swansea he and his partner Fiona Gray have transformed it room by room using their own plasterwork and decorative art.

However, it is Hunt that will now decide the future of Heveningham. Hunt who sold Foxtons for £375million in 2007, is now worth around £1.4billion. In 2005, he was rumoured to buy yet another mansion on London’s “Billionaires’ Row” and the world’s most expensive street – Kensington Gardens. His neighbours include Formula One heiress Tamara Ecclestone as well as a number of ambassadors. The 1846, Grade II-listed house cost £15.75million, with the first planning application made in 2008, according to the Daily Mail.

Central to his plans is a huge basement for his classic cars. Now, in an apparent olive branch to neighbours, the original 51,129 sq ft basement – that’s 55 times the floor space of the average home – has been cut from four storeys to two.

Heveningham Hall, described by 77-year-old Jones as the “finest neo classical interior in Europe” and his “spiritual home” stands in Suffolk, hosting a number of events throughout the summer to keep its innings.

Since his purchase, Hunt has spent large chunks of money on the house and grounds, with some of the grassy land and lakes now part of the 5000 acre neighbouring Wilderness Reserve.

Sir Robert Taylor designed the majority of house in 1778 for Sir Gerard Vanneck, converting what was a red brick Queen Anne house into an enormous house for Vanneck. Christopher Hussey, writing in “English Country Houses: Mid Georgian, 1760-1800,” states that “Taylor’s work is, in essence, an exaggeration of Chambers’s contemporary treatment of the north front of Somerset House, like it, deriving from Inigo Jones. But hints from the garden front of Versailles may have contributed to this device for centering an over-long façade.”