Neither a marble nor a hill in sight. But there is a house … even if it’s under renovation.
English Heritage, aided by the National Lottery Community Fund, are currently working to renovate Marble Hill House and grounds for future enjoyment by the public. The work spans 2018 to 2022, and the house remains closed for renovation work at the time of writing. This said, visitors are still free to visit the surrounding grounds. Normally the house is available to hire for special events, including civil wedding ceremonies and drinks receptions, with guided tours available for members of the public about once a month.
It is located on the Middlesex bank of the Thames riverside in Twickenham, just a few hundred yards east of where Orleans House was built in 1710, and Orleans House Gallery still stands, (see Post 64 for more), George II had Marble Hill House built for his mistress Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk, about fifteen years later in the mid-1720s. The elegant Palladian villa and gardens were intended as an Arcadian retreat from crowded 18th Century London, and it became a bit of a playground for the celebrities of the day. Both Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift were regular guests during Henrietta’s lifetime.
The front of the house, currently under maintenance
In the late 18th Century the house was rented by the Prince Regent, (the future king, George IV), for his mistress, Maria Fitzherbert, so the two could continue to meet in private.
Designed by architect Roger Morris, in collaboration with Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke, Marble Hill House was based on Andrea Palladio’s 1553 Villa Cornaro in Piombino Dese, Italy, and thus incorporated a cubic saloon on the first floor. Villa Cornaro also served as a model for plantation houses in the American colonies, examples being Drayton Hall, (1738–1742), in Charleston, South Carolina, and Thomas Jefferson’s initial version of Monticello, (1768–1770). Its grand interiors include a fine collection of early Georgian paintings.
After being built the architecture of Marble Hill House became known more widely from published engravings, and was widely admired. Its design was copied elsewhere, and provided a standard model for the English villas built throughout the Thames Valley, and further afield, for example New Place, King’s Nympton, Devon, built between 1746 and 1749 to the design of Francis Cartwright of Blandford in Dorset.
Bought by London County Council in 1902, Marble Hill opened its 66 acres of parkland grounds to the public the following year. Among the surviving features of the grounds are an ice house, a grotto and one of the oldest black walnut trees in the country.
The LCC’s successor, the Greater London Council, restored the house in the mid-1960s. English Heritage acquired it on the abolition of the GLC in 1986. In 2015 English Heritage won a Heritage Lottery Fund grant to develop Marble Hill House and its park in order to improve its presentation and the associated leisure facilities, which include rugby and hockey pitches, a cricket pitch and nets, tennis courts and a children's play area. Evidence was found in an archaeological investigation in 2017 of what has been described as a bowling alley next to the house. However, it is likely that game resembled boules as much as bowling, and the "alley" bears little resemblance to a modern bowling alley - arguably better described as a depression in the ground. The main evidence that the area was used for some sort of bowling rests on contemporary plans.
The house has featured in films, including the Shakespeare in Love in 1998.
Around the back
Around the back, with just a hundred yards or so of lawn between me and the river behind me
Small weeping beech set back a few yards from the rear of the house, with the Thames straight ahead at the end of the lawn
The back of the house from very near the river flowing behind me
(that small weeping beech is just visible against the bottom left edge of the house as we look)
The back of the house, from the path that runs along the river bank
(one false step and I'm in it)
Detail from a 1749 engraving by Augustin Heckell
(Remarkably unchanged in appearance from the above colour photograph from a similar viewpoint, though that small and rather lovely weeping beech is yet to take root!)
March 2024 update: Marble Hill House is open to the public again since completion of the renovation project.
See Post 35 for a different perspective on Marble Hill House.
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