The extensive diaries kept by Mr Gerald Flengate between 1809 and 1835 give much information on the life of an exceptionally rich man, an individual of such colossal wealth that it would have been nigh on impossible for him to spend it all. His capacity for lining his pockets was inexhaustible; he himself joked that his first words had been: ‘Money! Money! I want my money!’ He lived in a world of luxury, pampered at every moment, from his nine-course breakfast to his bedtime and his vast eight-poster (his favourite of several beds), which he shared with literally thousands of partners over the years, sometimes singly but often as part of a rampant orgy.

Flengate owned five abodes, and his main residence, in Gatshire, was one of the finest Georgian mansions in the country. It contained more than a hundred rooms, most of which he never entered. Its expansive grounds, covering over twenty-five thousand acres, contained a large salinised lake, where Flengate had his own oyster farm, plus a freshwater one, spanned by an ebony bridge, where swam the most brilliantly coloured carp. There were three architectural follies: a gazebo built entirely out of cowrie shells, a mock pagoda, and an indefinite structure redolent, in appearance, if not aroma, of an enormous wedge of Swiss cheese. Also to be found on the estate were a hothouse, where Flengate cultivated orchids, a stables, where racehorses were bred, and even a small canal.

Two hundred and eighty-five persons were employed on the estate. Apart from the usual array of cooks, butlers, scullery maids and valets, Flengate had both a private standing army (six stout infantrymen) and a navy (three jolly tars whose job it was to patrol the oyster lake). Thirty-nine full-time gardeners tended the park. The outskirts were left to nature, and it was here that Flengate’s pheasants roosted and his roe deer browsed. The area immediately around the house was landscaped. To the north was a boxwood maze with a splendid fountain in the centre; to the south, a garden where the shrubs had been cut into card suits. (‘One beats about the bush, the other beats the bush about!’ was the answer to the pruner's favourite riddle.) Peacocks and peahens courted amid the trees. To the east was a small menagerie with camels, tigers, crocodiles and gorillas; to the west, a rose garden.