Chiswick House, London

 

Built by 3rd Earl of Burlington in 1725-9, Chiswick House is a magnificent villa modelled on Palladio’s villa rotunda at Vicenza in Italy. It is situated in West London and surrounded by urban areas, but was originally designed as a country villa.

The perfectly formed neo-classical exterior is complemented by spectacular plaster ceilings by William Kent.

The Earl did not actually live in Chiswick House, but in an adjacent Jacobean mansion (demolished in 1758), using the Villa for displaying his works of art and entertaining his friends, who included poets Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, and the composer George Frideric Handel.

The Villa was inherited in 1753 by the fourth Duke of Devonshire and in 1788 the fifth Duke commissioned James Wyatt to add wings to the north and south. These were demolished in 1952.

In 1892 the eighth Duke moved to Chatsworth in Derbyshire and the house became a private mental home.

In 1928 it was bought by Middlesex County Council and is now in the care of English Heritage.

The gardens and grounds, which lead down to the River Thames, were originally adorned with a whole host of follies, statues and other additions. Many of these have disappeared over the years, but what remains include an Ionic temple, a Doric column, statues of Caesar, Pompey and Cicero, two obelisks, a cascade, an avenue of urns and sphinxes, a rustic house, a deer house, a bridge built by James Wyatt in 1788, and a large conservatory attributed to Joseph Paxton.

© John Welford