In the eighteenth century, Mr Treadway, the richest English merchant in Cyprus, built a most magnificent house in Larnaca, with a superb salon holding 500 people and a most elaborate fireplace, probably done by an Italian architect.
Treadway went bankrupt in 1724. The house was occupied then by the Pory family and somehow the house passed into the hands of Claude Delaval Cobham, former Commissioner of Larnaca. Cobham named the house Villa Claudia from 1878-1907. In 1913, the house was bought by the Orthodox See of Kition and the Pancyprian Larnaca College was housed there and a seminary there till 1932. Rupert Gunnis in 1936 wrote that it was turned into a seminary and was in a poor state of repair.
D. Dianellos bought the building soon after and turned it into an orphanage and in 1950 into a training technical school. By 2015 demolition of parts of the building started and by 2022 nothing was left to be seen.
The ‘Did You Know’ series is made possible with the support of OPAP (Cyprus) and the Active Citizens Fund.
