It was while he was chairman of George Steuart that Sir Thomas commenced building a dream home in the country. He selected an idyllic site at Haputale, surrounded by virgin forest and commanding views across hills and valleys and the highest mountain ranges of Ceylon.
The house was designed in the Tudor style, on the lines of Leeds Castle in Kent, with stout granite walls of locally quarried stone, long, narrow turret windows and chimneys. It looked in every detail an Elizabethan country mansion, the retreat in the tropics of a homesick Englishman, nostalgic for the scenes of his boyhood. Villiers spared no expense to ensure that his country home was luxurious in its appointments.
The roof was covered with flat Burma teak shingles. The doors, windows, paneling, staircase and floors were all of Burma teak. The elaborate pillared landing on the main staircase adoed by portraits of his relatives, the Clarendons and the Dukes of Bedford, consists of four stout English oaks, polished, but otherwise au naturel.
The garden lay-out was also British and, as in the house, the incomparable scenery is used to best effect. The terraced lawns, flowerbeds and orchard, like the drawing room, study, library, dining room and bedrooms, look out on lofty mountain ranges, all between 1,800 and 2,100m above sea level, etched sharply on the skyline to form a curious outline called the Sleeping Warrior.
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