Avenue House Estate Trust (AHET) is the charity that manages and directs Stephens House & Gardens.
Why we exist
When Henry Stephens died in 1918 he left Avenue House, his London home, and its gardens to Finchley Urban District Council ‘for the use and enjoyment always of the people’. It was a decade before the gardens were opened to the public, and then only after a court case between Stephens’ executors and the local people on one hand, and the Council, which wished to sell the estate for development, on the other.
In the late 1990s a group of local people became concerned that the Council (now the London Borough of Barnet) might once more wish to sell the estate. They agreed with the Council that they should form a charity to lease the whole estate and manage it for community benefit. Avenue House Estate Trust took a 125-year lease out from October 2002. Two decades later, the whole of Stephens House & Gardens is operating profitably under the direction of the Trust ensuring the house and grounds are being restored and maintained.
