The Old House was the heart of Sydenham's largest private estate, owned by the Hodsdon family in the eighteenth century, and by the Mayows for most of the nineteenth.

The house was probably built for Edward Hodsdon, a wine merchant, shortly after 1715.

Both families lived in Sydenham as a country retreat, but their wealth came from London. The Mayows were solicitors.

They developed the outlying parts of the estate from c.1860, but the Old House survived until 1902.

The Thorpe Estate (Queensthorpe Road, etc.) is now on the site.