In 1909 16-year-old William Morris began making bicycles to order in Longwall St, Oxford. He built his first motor car, the two-seater Morris Oxford, in 1913. By 1923 he was producing 20,000 cars a year and by 1925 Morris Motors Ltd represented 45 per cent of the British market.
The “Henry Ford of England”, Morris, now Lord Nuffield, and his wife Elizabeth were millionaires, but they were uncomfortable with such wealth. “You can only wear one suit at a time,” he famously noted. The couple would eventually give away £30m – the equivalent of £700m today – to good causes, through medical, educational and other charitable trusts.
The Nuffields also lived modestly. They bought Nuffield Place, in Oxfordshire, in 1933. The 1914 Arts and Crafts-style house was large, but hardly…
