Cheltenham was the model for the development of the estate. Pearson Thompson and Richard Roy were both involved in the Montpellier estate and railways in Cheltenham. The Montpellier estate was the model in many respects of them their work on the Ladbroke estate. Roy and Thompson appointed James Thomson as their architect. He was the person who first put the plans of Thomas Allason for secret gardens into practice and introduced the idea of concentric crescents around the north-west part of the hill (although Allason’s “great circus” plan was abandoned). Thomas Allom the principal architect of the 1850s and 1860s carried on this plan.