Lord Byron, Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott once dined at this Jacobean mansion in London. Destroyed by The Blitz it lives on now only in the Country Life Archive
Lord Byron jockeyed for position at the table alongside Lord Melbourne and Benjamin Disraeli. Charles Dickens and Sir Walter ScottThe Holland House estate was once London's best example of early domestic Jacobean architecture in the country.
One of the greatest features of any city are its green spaces — lungs that provide essential oxygen and calm among the fumes, noise and constant goings on.
Our capital is blessed with a myriad green spaces, but less than a century ago, one of London's most famous parks was still in private ownership, hiding a property and grounds, that was, according to Country Life: 'more magnificently harboured than the King himself' (1905).
The house and park in question was Holland House, a vast 17th-century mansion with expansive gardens off London’s prestigious Kensington High Street. The property was said to be one of the most famous examples of early domestic Jacobean architecture in the country, and the gargantuan estate housed formal and kitchen gardens, pleasure grounds and a woodland pheasant shoot. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the chosen venue for the the RHS’s Summer Flower Show.
As was befitting of such a grand country property within easy reach of the capital (Kensington would have been classified as the countryside when the house was first built), Holland House had many famous (and infamous) owners.
Holland Houses's gilt room.
Originally named Cope Castle after its first owner, Sir Walter Cope — a James I loyalist, Gentleman Usher of the Privy Chamber, Chamberlain of the Exchequer and connoisseur, who employed some of the greatest craftsmen and artists of the time to adorn his new home.
Unfortunately for Cope, his love of the finer things in life culminated in him dying with large debts said to amount to more than £26,000 (more than £5.5 million in today's money). With no male heir, the house passed to his daughter Isabel and her husband Henry Rich (of name and fortune).
This photograph of the stairs opened the 1905 feature, published in 'Country Life'.
The couple set about greatly expanding the mansion and Rich, who was gifted the title Lord Holland, decided to rename it Holland House. Unfortunately, he was very ambitious and very duplicitous. He plotted and schemed and lent his support to both the puritans and the royalists, eventually siding with Charles I. This final move would prove his undoing and in 1649 he was sent to meet with a man with a large axe. The house remained in the Rich family, but the member subsequently decided to let it out.
It was said that William III, who suffered terribly from asthma, considered purchasing the country mansion before settling instead for the property we now know as Kensington Palace. Towards the end of his life, the writer, MP and Spectator co-founder Joseph Addison, by fortune of marriage, resided in the fashionable house. It was reported that while in the process of composing his latest tome, Addison would furiously pace the long gallery, a bottle of wine conveniently positioned at either end for refreshment.
In the middle of the 18th century, the Fox family, of Whig political fame, first leased and then purchased the estate from the Rich family — and turned it into one of the most fashionable addresses in the capital. It was the childhood home of the fantastically indulged and flamboyant politician Charles James Fox (his father was said to have ordered a demolished wall in the grounds to be rebuilt so a young Charles, who had missed its first demolition, could observe its demise the second time round). Throughout the Fox family’s tenure, the property was a hotbed of British social and political action. According to Country Life's 1905 articles, there were 'wits and authors, statesmen and travellers, who elbowed for places at uncomfortable dinners.' Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Lord Byron jockeyed for position at the table alongside Lord Melbourne and Benjamin Disraeli. Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott were guests, too.
Towards the end of the 19th and into the 20th centuries, Fox descendants began to sell off their profitable land in order to keep the grand old house in the manner to which it was accustomed. It did, however, unlike so many others, continue to thrive. In 1939, George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother) attended a grand debutante ball in the property. It was to be it’s last.
An ivy clad wall in the extensive gardens.
On September 27, 1940, in the throes of the Blitz, an oil bomb started a fire in one of the towers. It was closely followed by a 'Molotov bread basket' — a Soviet-made droppable bomb dispenser that combined a large high-explosive charge with a cluster of incendiary bombs. Firefighters works for more than 12 hours and managed to save parts of the east wing from total destruction, but the rest of the building was raised to the ground.
The remains of the house were Grade I Listed in 1947 and sold, along with 52 acres, to London County Council for £250,000 (more than £6 million). The land is now known to use as Holland Park and the remains of the house a backdrop for the open-to-all, open air Holland Park Theatre.
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