 The design and the name were inspired by Thomas' love of Charles Major's 1902 novel "Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall," a fictionalized version of the life of Elizabethan heiress, Dorothy Vernon.Haddon Hall is, in fact, an English country house located in Derbyshire, England and the dining room of this house was the inspiration for the Dorothy Vernon room at Bryn Mawr's Deanery.The Dorothy Vernon room in the Deanery was designed by the architects of the second renovation, Archer and Allen, and Lockwood de Forest.