In about 1821 he purchased Buckenham Tofts, an estate near Thetford in Norfolk, with a large neo-classical house. He increased the size of the park, extended the flower gardens, and planted many ornamental trees, such as the cedars which survive today. In 1820, Alexander Baring commissioned Robert Smirke, a pupil of George Dance, to build the single-storey west wing. He later ordered peach houses and vineries. On 6 November 1819, Baring ordered from the Birmingham ironmasters Jones & Clark two metallic pine houses to be built in the new walled kitchen garden on the opposite side of the lake about half mile south east of The Grange. In 1817, before the works were finished, Drummond sold the house to Alexander Baring, second son of Sir Francis Baring who owned Stratton Park, five miles north of The Grange. As at Hammerwood, the giant Doric portico is echoed by a single storey portico behind so as to provide an enhanced perspective when viewed from the hill opposite beyond the lake in the style of the Picturesque.
The windows of servants’ rooms on the uppermost storey were covered by the entablature of the temple facade, and is partly why it was necessary to extend the house. What had been ground floor rooms became basement rooms and the main reception rooms which had been on the piano nobile were now at the same level as the podium. This is when the podium visible today was built. The transformation was largely external - the old house was literally wrapped in Roman cement, a very hard render made from ground flint. Whilst The Grange is sometimes claimed to be the earliest Greek Revival style house in Europe, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, for instance, was using the primitive Greek Doric at Hammerwood Park in 1792.
The massive Doric portico is a copy of the Theseion in Athens and the side elevations imitate the Choragic Monument of Thrasyllus.
Wilkins, a promising young architect and antiquary, had been much influenced by his recent travels to Greece and Asia Minor. In 1804, Henry Drummond commissioned his friend the architect William Wilkins to transform his brick house into a neoclassical Ancient Greek temple.
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