During Buxton’s restoration of the house, it was the home from 1904 (rent free) of a relative, Conrad le Despenser Roden Noel and his wife Miriam. Conrad Noel was later to become infamous as the ‘Red Vicar’ of Thaxted. It was Noel who pursuaded Buxton to use the local woodcarver and joiner, Ernest Beckwith, to undertake the restoration rather than the well known firm of professional architects that Buxton had initially favoured. Noel wrote of his time at Paycocke’s, ‘It had exciting disadvantages … we lived in an atmosphere of dust and white-wash and broken plaster … the cold was so intense that we sometimes sat over the fire in the hall with its wrought-iron basket and logs of wood surrounded by a tent of screens … in the breakfast-room the pigeons, and even robin-redbreasts, and other cheeky little fellows would insist on sharing our meals, hopping about the table and pecking at the butter and carrying off other titbits.’  It was Miriam, a keen gardener, who set out the garden in the Arts and Crafts style with stepped terraces, a writing shelter and a dovecote – and also a tennis court. The yard was covered in herringbone brickwork. The house was usually damp and sometimes flooded and after the Noels left in 1909 these circumstances made the house difficult to let. Buxton later ‘made improvements to render it more habitable in winter. He put in central heating and a damp-proof course and introduced more light into the dark panelled rooms. People were now able to read books and newspapers in the daylight’ (from Noel’s autobiography)

In 1923 Noel’s friend Gustav Holst recuperated in the house after an injury; his daughter Imogen, then 16, wrote to a school friend, ‘This house is absolutely too wonderful for words … it is a dream. And it is great fun living in a dream …The house is supposed to be the best example of the period in the whole of England, and artists and architects make pilgrimages from all over the country to see it. We are tremendously proud of it, and as it isn’t our own we can swank about it to our heart’s content.’

In 1924 Buxton, who only occasionally used it, presented the house to the National Trust.

Paycocke’s was almost destroyed on 23rd October 1928 when a serious fire broke out on the stairs, quickly spread to a bedroom and then set the roof on fire. Things looked so desperate that the crowd who gathered to watch were organised to salvage the furniture and paintings. By then the Coggeshall Fire Brigade had arrived and fought their way up the stairs to bring the fire under control and save the building.