Standing on its hill, close to the parish church of St Mary, a cluster of farm buildings and cottages, Acton Round is in many ways the beau-ideal of the Baroque English manor house. Embellished with twentieth-century yew-hedged gardens and a fabulous array of follies – which include a Chinese pagoda and gothick summer house – it has changed remarkably little since it was built in 1713–14 for Whitmore Acton. An heir-in-waiting’s house, Thomas Wotton, writing in 1741, stated it was built by Whitmore Acton’s father, Sir Edward, who, in addition to rebuilding Aldenham (q.v.) ‘also built another seat at Round Acton, or Acton Round… for his eldest son Whitmore, where he resided during Sir Edward’s life, which was a very commodious and well-built house’. The hamlet’s unusual name derives from the fact that the church is said to have been a round edifice, erected by the Knights Templar.

It appears that the house was also a home to Whitmore’s aunt Hester, the widow of his uncle Richard Acton (1653–1703). Richard had been a London vintner and linen draper of Leadenhall Street and a member of the Royal African Company. Although he had issue by his first wife Anne Llewellyn, Hester, whom he had married secondly in 1698, had not produced any children. She was the daughter of the military contractor and speculator Thomas Abrahall of Barking – who is referenced in Pepys’ diaries – and after five years of marriage to Richard commemorated him at his death with a handsome monument in Acton Round Church, sculpted by Edward Stanton in 1715, depicting the couple in high relief within an oval beneath their coat of arms. Hester, according to an agreement of 1715, was to ‘cohabit and dwell’ with Whitmore Acton during his occupancy of Acton Round and it has been speculated that she – who certainly paid to furnish the house – also funded its building.