Harold Ozanne's maternal grandfather Frederick Searle returned to Europe after thirty years of running plantations in the West Indies. On a trip to Italy in 1879 he cam across the dilapidated ruins of Horace's summer residence 30 miles outside Rome. The villa had been in 100 BC with parts rebuilt in 1583. Frederick and his wife then spent the next 20 years restoring the property. They died within a year of each other and in 1903 the property passed to their daughters Mary and Georgiana, as their son Frederick had recently died. Mary showed little interest in the villa; her husband had just died of yellow fever in the Gambia and possibly she found Sant'Antonio too cold and remote for her taste.

But Georgiana had married George Hallam who was a brilliant classical scholar and a fellow of St John's College Cambridge. He had a great interest in the works of Horace (he had even named his second son after him) and thus a particular attachment to Sant'Antonio. In 1906 he retired from his position as a school master at Harrow School and the couple assumed responsibility for Sant'Antonio.

George died at Sant' Antonio in 1932 and Georgina in 1944. Their eldest son Francis died had at the age of nine and their second son Horace was killed in action in Palestine in 1917. So the ownership of the villa might have passed to Georgiana's niece and nephew Katherine and Harold Ozanne. They showed little interest in taking on this responsibility but Katherine's daughter Lucy who had married a French count in 1926, had a huge affection for Sant'Antonio and so they took over the project.

Sant'Antonio has passed down through Lucy's family to her son and grandchildren. It is now administered by the Landmark Trust and is available as a holiday let.