Moeran was on the cusp of greatness. He was an established composer, with the patronage of Hamilton Harty: one of the great musical personalities of the time. Numerous performances of his works were programmed for the first few months of 1925, and new music was flooding from his creative imagination. Plans were in train for a series of recitals at the Wigmore Hall featuring his chamber music and that of his friends and contemporaries. Moeran's rise to prominence during the previous two years had indeed been meteoric, and his was the name in town. The musical world lay at the feet of the thirty-year-old composer. On 2 January, he paid the one and a half guineas Country subscription for the musical club, again providing his parents’ house in Laverton as his home address. However, he continued to reside mostly in London, although towards the end of the previous year he had chosen not to renew his lease on John Ireland's former flat in Elm Park Mansions and had taken rooms at 162 Haverstock Hill, NW3, in Belsize Park. Meanwhile, Philip Heseltine had decided to move out of the city, and in mid-January he took a sub-lease on a cottage in Eynsford in Kent that was rented by pianist, composer and music publisher Hubert Foss from the local grocer Stanley Munn, whose shop was next door. Foss had lived in this cottage with his wife for some years, but their separation had caused him to seek other accommodation. During the years of the Foss residence, their home had been the centre of musical gatherings, where composers in whom he took an interest were invited to talk about and play their works. In leasing the cottage, Heseltine's intention was not only to continue Foss’s tradition but also to establish a creative commune where ‘open house’ was kept, and writers, painters, sculptors and other artistic members of 1920s London society, together with composers and musicians, were welcome to visit and remain as long as they liked. Regular visitors included Constant Lambert, Arnold Bax, Cecil Gray, Augustus John, Patrick Hadley, William Walton, Bernard van Dieren, Jack Lindsay, Nina Hamnett, John Goss and, for the first few months of Heseltine's tenancy, Moeran himself. However, this initially well-intentioned objective was rapidly overwhelmed by the increasingly hedonistic lifestyle indulged in by the cottage inhabitants both long- and short-term.