In 1915 Geoffrey Bensusan-Butt bought the entire property for his wife, Ruth, one of the first female GPs, and their three children. ‘Dr. Ruth’, sister-in-law of Lucien Pissaro, the painter, had her consulting rooms in the front part of The Minories and also opened the town’s first infant nursery there. A well-known and influential person in the Borough!

Eventually she sold the house and garden and the Gothic Folly (acquired in 1923 from East Hill House next door) to the Victor Batte-Lay Trust in 1956. She continued to live there in the ground floor flat – now the Garden Café – until her death in 1958.

With the purchase of the Minories, the Batte-Lay trustees fulfilled Mrs. Batte-Lay's wish that 'a suitable building should be endowed and used for the benefit of the people of the Borough and surrounding area, and, in particular, for those having an artistic and antiquarian interest in the Borough'. Thus a private Trust, answerable to the Charity Commissioners, has provided a public cultural and artistic centre for Colchester and North-East Essex for well over 45 years.