History
History
The fascinating history of Chiswick’s finest house
11.12.2024
Words by Jake Russell
How Walpole House on Chiswick Mall offers a glimpse into this London village’s unique history
Royal roots
In the Middle Ages, Chiswick was a small village to the west of London, filled with fishermen and boatbuilders. However, in the sixteenth century, wealthy Londoners began buying land and building mansions around the village, drawn by ‘the sweet air and situation.’
One of the grandest properties was Walpole House, which was constructed on Chiswick Mall, the street lining the river. According to Nikolaus Pevsner, the celebrated architectural historian, the core of the house dates back to the Tudor era. However, its garden façade was constructed in 1700, and its river frontage in 1730, both built from brown brick with red dressings.
When building work started, the house was occupied by Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland and celebrated mistress of Charles II. Originally, the king gave Villiers the grand Surrey residence of Nonsuch Palace to live in, but she demolished the property and sold off its materials to pay for her gambling debts. Eventually, she moved to Chiswick, living quietly at Walpole House and dying at the age of 68.
Year unknown
1923
1905
A prosperous Chiswick
The mansion was later inherited by the politician Thomas Walpole, a nephew of Prime Minister Robert Walpole. Thomas was a banker and a director of the East India Company, and he lived at the house from 1799 until his death in 1803, giving the property its present name.
By this point Chiswick was prosperous. Addresses like Church Street and Chiswick Square were lined with attractive townhouses, while the Earl of Burlington had turned the Jacobean Chiswick House into one of the finest Palladian mansions in the country.
After Burlington’s death, Chiswick House was inherited by the Duke of Devonshire, who began inviting the leading Whig politicians of the Georgian Era to stay. Meanwhile, the village was now home to major cultural figures, like the essayist and poet Alexander Pope, the painter and satirist William Hogarth, and even the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who lodged here for several months in 1766.
Vanity Fair
At the same time, Chiswick Mall was becoming lined with handsome riverside properties. For instance, Morton House and Strawberry House were both built in the early eighteenth century, as well as Lingard House and Woodroffe House. Although none of them matched the scale of Walpole House, they shared the brick façades and lofty classical proportions.
In the early nineteenth century, Walpole House became a boys’ boarding school. One of the pupils was William Makepeace Thackeray, who later found fame with his satirical novel Vanity Fair. The novel opens at a school for young ladies inspired by the author’s childhood: ‘While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach … a score of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the stately old brick house.’
Over the course of this century, the population of Chiswick increased sevenfold. London was expanding westward, while the building of a railway station in 1849 brought the capital even closer. New schools, churches and streets were constructed, with Victorian properties appearing along Chiswick Mall. And William Morris, one of the leading figures in the Arts and Crafts movement, lived at nearby Kelmscott House on the Upper Mall.
A garden workshop
The village was also busy, containing both breweries and factories (the floor covering linoleum was invented in the neighbourhood). Furthermore, the shipbuilding firm Thorneycroft & Co was founded here in 1864, with their Thames shipyard constructing torpedo boats and other large craft. The owner John Isaac Thornycroft lived at Walpole House, while his father – the sculptor Thomas Thornycroft – used the garden as a workshop. For many years the father’s celebrated sculpture of Boadicea, which now stands near Westminster Bridge, was stored in a plaster cast in the garden.
In the early 1900s, the house was owned by the actor and theatre manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Later it was bought by the banker and art collector Robin Benson, who designed and restored the property’s gardens. More recently, in the early twentieth century, it was lived in by the designer Jasper Conran, continuing the links to royalty and politics, business and the arts, which are embodied in the unique history of Walpole House.