The House on the Hill is set in Rudgwick, West Sussex, The house is currently occupied by Rikkyo School in England, a Japanese boarding school. The house was built in around 1900 for Erwin and Lucy Schumacher, owners of a large estate across several parishes. Erwin was the London representative of the Russo-German trading company Wogau & Co. The book charts the changes in ownership, the stories of the families who lived there, and their descendants, and introduces several tangential stories of interest, not least about those who worked on the estate.