| Chiswick House | |
|---|---|
.jpg) View from forecourt | |
  Location within London Borough of Hounslow | |
| General information | |
| Architectural style | Neo-Palladian |
| Location | Chiswick,London, England |
| Coordinates | 51°29′02″N0°15′31″W / 51.48376°N 0.25866°W /51.48376; -0.25866 |
| Completed | 1729 |
| Owner | English Heritage |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect(s) | Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington |
| Website | |
| chiswickhouseandgardens | |
Chiswick House is aNeo-Palladian stylevilla in theChiswick district ofLondon, England. A "glorious"[1] example of Neo-Palladian architecture inwest London, the house was designed and built byRichard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694–1753), and completed in 1729. The house and garden occupy 26.33 hectares (65.1 acres).[2] The garden was created mainly by the architect and landscape designerWilliam Kent, and it is one of the earliest examples of theEnglish landscape garden.
After the death of the 3rd Earl of Burlington in 1753, and the subsequent deaths of his last surviving daughter (Charlotte Boyle) in 1754 and his widow in 1758, the property was ceded toWilliam Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, Charlotte's husband. After William's death in 1764, the villa passed to his and Charlotte's orphaned young son,William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire. His wife,Georgiana Spencer, a prominent and controversial figure in fashion and politics whom he married in 1774, used the house as a retreat and as aWhig stronghold for many years; it was whereCharles James Fox died in 1806. Prime MinisterGeorge Canning also died there in 1827, in a bedroom in the John White wing buildings.
During the 19th century, the house fell into decline and was rented out by the Cavendish family. It was used as a mental hospital, theChiswick Asylum, from 1892. In 1929, the9th Duke of Devonshire sold Chiswick House toMiddlesex County Council, and it became a fire station. The villa suffered damage during World War II, and in 1944, aV-2 rocket damaged one of the two wings, which were both demolished in 1956. Today, the house is aGrade I listed building and is maintained byEnglish Heritage.
The original Chiswick House was aJacobean house owned by SirEdward Wardour, and possibly built by his father.[3] It is datedc. 1610 in a late 17th-century engraving of the Chiswick House estate byJan Kip and Leonard Knyff,[4] and was constructed with four sides around an open courtyard.[4] Wardour sold the house in 1624 toRobert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset.[3][5] The house was quite large: in the1664 Hearth Tax documents it is recorded as having 33 fireplaces.[6] The house was at the south end of the Royalist line in theBattle of Turnham Green (1641), during theFirst English Civil War.[7] The house was purchased byCharles Boyle, 3rd Viscount Dungarvan in 1682.[8]
The Jacobean house was used by the Boyle family as a summer retreat from their central London home,Burlington House.[9][10] After a fire in 1725,Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (Lord Burlington), then head of the family,[9] decided to build a new "villa" to the west of the old Chiswick House.
During his trip to Italy in 1719, Burlington had acquired a passion for Palladian architecture.[11][12] He had not closely inspectedRoman ruins or made detailed drawings on the sites in Italy; he relied onPalladio andScamozzi as his interpreters of the classic tradition.[13] Another source of his inspiration were drawings he collected, including those of Palladio himself, which had belonged toInigo Jones and his pupilJohn Webb. According toHoward Colvin, "Burlington's mission was to reinstate in Augustan England the canons of Roman architecture as described byVitruvius, exemplified by its surviving remains, and practised by Palladio,Scamozzi and Jones."[14]
Burlington, himself a talented amateur architect and (in the words ofHorace Walpole) "Apollo of the Arts",[15] designed the villa with the aid ofWilliam Kent, who also took a leading role in designing the gardens.[16] Burlington built the villa with enough space to house his art collection, regarded as containing "some of the best pictures in Europe",[17] and his more select pieces of furniture, some of which was purchased on his firstGrand Tour of Europe in 1714. Construction of the villa took place between 1726 and 1729.[18]
After Burlington's death in 1753,[19] his wife,Lady Dorothy Savile, and daughter,Charlotte, who had marriedWilliam Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire in 1748,[20] inherited the house. Charlotte died in December 1754,[21] and Lady Burlington died in September 1758.[22] Several views of Burlington's house were made by the architect-draughtsmanJohn Donowell around this time.[23]
After the death of Lady Burlington in 1758, the villa and gardens passed to the Cavendish family. William Cavendish died in 1764, leaving the property to his son William, the 5thDuke of Devonshire. In 1774, William married LadyGeorgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire,[24] who enjoyed spending time at Chiswick which she referred to as her "earthly paradise".[25][26] She regularly invited members of theWhig party to the house for tea parties in the garden.[27][28] In 1788 the Cavendish family demolished the Jacobean house and hired architect John White to add two wings to the villa to increase the amount of accommodation.[29] The Duchess was responsible for the building of the Classical Bridge in 1774, designed by the architectJames Wyatt,[29] and the planting of roses on the walls of the new wings and the sides of the buildings. She died in 1806.
In 1813, a 300 feet (91 m) conservatory was built bySamuel Ware, with the purpose of housing exotic fruits and camellias.[30] > Gardener Lewis Kennedy built an Italian inspired geometric garden around the conservatory. In 1827, after a rapid decline in health, Tory Prime MinisterGeorge Canning died in the same room where Charles James Fox had died in 1806.[31]
Between 1862 and 1892 the villa was rented by the Cavendish family to a number of successive tenants, including theDuchess of Sutherland in 1867,[32] the Prince of Wales in the 1870s,[33] andJohn Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, patron of the architectWilliam Burges, from 1881 to 1892.[34]
From 1892, the 9th Duke of Devonshire rented the villa to Doctors Thomas Seymour and Charles Molesworth Tuke (sons ofThomas Harrington Tuke), and it was used by them as a mental hospital, theChiswick Asylum, for wealthy male and female patients until 1928.[35] The asylum was praised for its relatively compassionate approach to its inmates. The wings of the house used for the asylum were demolished in the 1950s so little now remains of this use, except in archival records.[36] In 1897, the two sphinxes on the main gate were removed toGreen Park during the celebrations of theDiamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. They were never returned.[37]
The 9th Duke of Devonshire sold Chiswick House toMiddlesex County Council in 1929,[38] the purchase price being met in part by contributions from public subscribers, including KingGeorge V.[35] The villa became a fire station during World War II,[39] and suffered damage; vibration from the bombing of Chiswick brought down the plasterwork in the Upper Tribunal, and on 8 September 1944 aV-2 rocket damaged one of the two wings.[40] The wings were removed in 1956.[29]
In 1948, extensive lobbying from the newly createdGeorgian Group prevented it from being destroyed.[41] The house came under the aegis of theMinistry of Works and subsequently ofEnglish Heritage.[37][42]
Hounslow Council and English Heritage formed the Chiswick House and Gardens Trust in 2005 to unify the management of the villa and gardens. The trust took over the administration for the villa and gardens in July 2010, following the completion of the restoration works.[43] AHeritage Lottery Fund grant was complemented by approximately £4 million from other sources, for restoration of the gardens in 2007.[38] The garden is open to the public from dawn until dusk without charge.[44]
Chiswick House was an attempt by Lord Burlington to create aRoman villa, rather than a Renaissance pastiche, situated in a symbolicRoman garden.[45] Chiswick Villa is inspired in part by several buildings of the 16th-century Italian architectsAndrea Palladio and his assistantVincenzo Scamozzi. The house is often said to be directly inspired by Palladio'sVilla Capra "La Rotonda" near Vicenza,[46] as architectColen Campbell had offered Lord Burlington a design for a villa closely based on the Villa Capra for his use at Chiswick. However, although this was clearly influential, Lord Burlington rejected this design; it was subsequently used atMereworth Castle, Kent.[47] Lord Burlington's library list at Chiswick shows that he was not restricted to the influence of Andrea Palladio. He owned books by influential Italian Renaissance architects such asSebastiano Serlio andLeon Battista Alberti, and his library contained books by French architects, sculptors, illustrators and architectural theorists likeJean Cotelle,Philibert de l'Orme,Abraham Bosse,Jean Bullant,Salomon de Caus,Roland Fréart de Chambray,Hugues Sambin,Antoine Desgodetz, and John James's translation ofClaude Perrault'sTreatise of the Five Orders. Whether Palladio's work inspired Chiswick or not, the Renaissance architect exerted an important influence on Lord Burlington through his plans and reconstructions of lost Roman buildings; many of these, unpublished and little known, were purchased by Burlington on his second Grand Tour and housed in the Blue Velvet Room, which served as his study.[48] These reconstructions were the source for many of the varied geometric shapes within Burlington's Villa, including the use of the octagon, circle and rectangle (withapses).[49][50][51] Burlington's use of Roman sources can be seen in features including the steep-pitched dome of the villa, which is derived from thePantheon in Rome. However, the source for the octagonal form of the dome, the Upper Tribunal, Lower Tribunal and cellar at Chiswick may be Scamozzi'sRocca Pisana nearVicenza.[52] Burlington may also have been influenced in his choice of octagon by the drawings of the Renaissance architectSebastiano Serlio (1475–1554),[53] or by Roman buildings of antiquity (for example, Lord Burlington owned Andrea Palladio's drawings of the octagonal mausoleum atDiocletian's Palace,Split in modern Croatia).[54]
The brick-built Villa's façade is faced inPortland stone, with a small amount ofstucco. The finely carvedCorinthian capitals on the projecting six-column portico, carved byJohn Boson, are derived from theTemple of Castor and Pollux in Rome.[55] The inset door, projecting plinth and 'v'-necked rusticated vermiculation (resemblingtufa) were all derived from the base ofTrajan's Column. The short sections of crenellated wall with ball finials which extend out either side of the villa were symbolic of medieval (or Roman) fortified town walls, and were inspired by their use by Palladio at hischurch of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice and byInigo Jones (1573–1652) (Palladio produced woodcuts of the Villa Foscari with crenellated sections of walls in hisI quattro libri dell'architettura in 1570, yet they were never built). To reinforce this link, two full-length statues of Palladio and Jones are positioned in front of these sections of wall. Palladio's influence is also felt in the general cubic form of the villa with its central hall with other rooms leading off its axis. The villa is a half cube of 70 feet (21 m) by 70 feet (21 m) by 35 feet (11 m).[56] The house when built was described byJohn, Lord Hervey as "Too small to live in, and too big to hang to a watch".John Clerk of Penicuik described it as "Rather curious than convenient", whileHorace Walpole called it "the beautiful model".[57][58]
The gardens at Chiswick were an attempt to recreate a garden of ancient Rome,[59][60] such as the EmperorHadrian'sVilla Adriana at Tivoli.[61] From the 1720s, Burlington and Kent experimented with new designs, incorporating elements such as aHa-ha, classical garden buildings, statues, groves, faux Egyptian objects, bowling greens, winding walks, cascades and water features. A theatre of hedges known as anexedra was designed by William Kent and originally displayed ancient statues of three unknown Roman gentlemen. The lawn at the rear of the house was created by 1745 and planted with youngCedar of Lebanon trees which alternate with stone funerary urns designed by William Kent. Placed between the urns and the Cedar of Lebanon are three more sphinxes orientated to face the rising sun.[62]
A lake was created around 1727 by widening theBollo Brook. The excess soil was heaped up behind William Kent's cascade to produce an elevated walkway for people to admire the gardens and a view of the nearby River Thames. A gateway designed by Inigo Jones in 1621 atBeaufort House in Chelsea (home of SirHans Sloane) was bought and removed by Lord Burlington and rebuilt in the gardens at Chiswick in 1738.[63] The Classic Bridge beyond the Orange Tree Garden was built forGeorgiana Spencer in 1774 to the design ofJames Wyatt.[64]
The kitchen garden was created in 1682 as part of an adjoining property. Its ownership changed several times, and the garden fell into disrepair. In 2005 it was restored by local volunteers of the Chiswick House Kitchen Garden charity. In 2009 the charity was awarded a grant from theBig Lottery Fund Local Food Scheme, which it had transferred to the Chiswick House and Gardens Trust to fund a community gardener and to assist with the ongoing operation of the kitchen garden.[65]
Chiswick House has been linked withFreemasonry,[66] and is believed by some scholars to have functioned as a privateMasonic Lodge or Temple (unaffiliated to Grand Lodge), given that many of the ceiling paintings by William Kent in the Gallery and the Red, Blue and Summer Parlour Rooms contain iconography of a strong Masonic, Hermetic, and possible Jacobite character.[66][67][68][69] The proportions of several of the upstairs rooms also have significance in relation to biblical buildings important in Freemasonry. Lord Burlington's status as an important Freemason is indicated by his inclusion in theFreemason's Pocket Companion of 1736 and in a poem in James Anderson'sConstitutions of the Free-Masons of 1723 where he is linked to an illustrious line of personalities important in Masonic lore. Pat Rogers has argued (following the original research of Jane Clark) that Chiswick House was a symbolic temple, based on so-called Royal Arch Freemasonry, involving a Hermetic intervention designed to heal the sufferings of the exiled Jews.[66] Lord Burlington's handwritten list of titles in his library at Chiswick also shows that he supported a large number of publications by Freemasons.[70] After completion of the villa in 1729, Burlington later provided inspiration to other Masonic architects for numerous other buildings, such asThomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester atHolkham Hall, Norfolk[71]Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, atGoodwood House, and theMansion House, nicknamed the "Egyptian Hall" for its columns.[72]
Although little is known of the people who stayed or visited the house in Lord Burlington's lifetime, many important visitors to the property are recorded as visiting throughout its history. These included leading figures of the European 'Enlightenment' including the philosophersVoltaire (1694–1778) andJean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778); the future US PresidentsJohn Adams (1735–1826) andThomas Jefferson (1743–1826);Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790); the German landscape artistPrince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau; the Italian statesmanGiuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882); Russian TsarsNicholas I (1796–1855) andAlexander I (1777–1825); theshah of Persia;Queen Victoria[73] (1819–1901) andPrince Albert of Saxe-Coburg[73] (1819–61); SirWalter Scott (1771–1832); PrinceLeopold III, Duke of Anhalt-Dessau (1740–1817); Prime MinistersWilliam Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) and SirRobert Walpole (1676–1745); QueenCaroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1683–1737);John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (1713–92) and the architectWilliam Burges (1827–1881).
On 20 May 1966, theBeatles visited Chiswick House to shoot promotional films for both sides of their latest 45 RPM single, "Paperback Writer" and "Rain". There are scenes shot in the conservatory, in the walled garden and by the exedra.[74]
Since the restoration of the gardens, a variety of seasonal events have been held in the gardens of Chiswick House each year, including aCamellia show, open days in the walled kitchen garden, acircus, and amagic lantern festival.[75][76]
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