With England at peace, the Alwyns made a sort of fresh start by moving house. Hampstead Garden Suburb in North London, influenced by the creation of Letchworth Garden City, was begun by the visionary Dame Henrietta Barnett. This wife of the founder of Toynbee Hall envisaged a place where the rich and poor might live side by side, the dwellings of both practical and attractive. Sir Edwin Lutyens was commissioned to design the principal buildings, including the church of St Jude’s (Byzantine style but with a Gothic appearance) and the Free Church, structures that still mark the skyline of the Garden City. Between 1906 and 1908 Lutyens designed the area around the Central Square, although his plans were never finalised. The eighteenth-century styled 8 North Square (with its Friends Meeting House placed at one of its corners) was an altogether grander house than the one in Brockswood Lane, Welwyn Garden City. Jonathan Alwyn recalls that ‘Lutyens only designed the facade which, whilst looking impressive enough from the outside, led to somewhat irregular interior proportions.’ Alwyn purchased the property from Mr and Mrs Roy (with whom Olive had an Academy connection) Chapman; its acquisition seemed to mark the commercial success Alwyn had made of his career. Above the dining room on the first floor was his music room where he composed on Olive’s grand piano, but Nicholas recalls that ‘He actually regarded composition as a chore rather than a pleasure to a very large extent. I think he was lazy. He nearly had to force himself to go upstairs to compose and it was almost as if he was doing it to spite others rather than for himself which was a shame because he liked it when he’d finished, but the actual creation …’