Home Truths: Henry Ford’s newly-restored ‘Neverland’, with its stolen Irish hearthstone, is a window into a megalomaniac’s obsession with houses

Henry Ford at the fireplace of his home at Fair Lane

Mark Keenan

“I believe a home isn’t four walls. It’s a place where you get the strength to go on,” said Henry Ford, pioneer of modern motoring and manufacturing — and a house and home obsessive.

While we are all somewhat guilty of striving to recapture past memories through our homes, furnishing and interior choices, Ford took built nostalgia to extremes, not only through the vast house he made for himself and the dozens of homes he bought, but also his rude interventions into the private homes of his own workers and those of his family.