Chiswick House and Chiswick House Grounds *

Site on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens, for Register Entry see https://www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list. The Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England was established in 1984 and was commonly called English Heritage. In April 2015 it split into 2 separate entities, Historic England (HE), which continues to champion and protect the historic environment, and the English Heritage Trust, whose role is to look after the 400+ historic sites and monuments owned by the state. HE manages the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) that includes over 400,000 items ranging from prehistoric monuments to office blocks, battlefields and parks, which benefit from legal protection.

Chiswick House and its grounds were created by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694-1753), one of the earliest promoters of Palladianism in England. His villa was built in c.1727-29 next to Old Chiswick House, the old Jacobean house his grandfather, the first Earl of Burlington, had purchased in 1682. In c.1732 a 2-storey link was built between the two properties. The estate Burlington inherited had pleasure gardens in three parts, including a knot garden, grass lawn with statuary and a large walled enclosure to the north divided by a tree-lined walk running north/south, the only feature that survives today. There were also productive gardens, including a kitchen garden, orchard and paddock. Initial projects by Burlington and Kent included creating the grass amphitheatre around a circular pool with a central obelisk, overlooked by an Ionic Temple, all still extant. A wilderness garden was created on the former paddock, the orchard was converted into a deer paddock, with a ha-ha and deer houses, and the kitchen garden was laid out with ornamental water with mounds and trees planted. The walled enclosure became a Grove, with the walls removed and in the north-east corner a statue of Samson slaying the Philistine, moved to Chatsworth in 1928. At the north end of the tree-lined walk a patte d'oie was created, the meeting point of 3 radiating hedged avenues. Each avenue ended in a built feature - the Casina, the Pagan Temple and the Rustic House, the latter the only to survive. Other features included a free-standing Doric column topped by a Venus de Medici, and a rectangular piece of water with a brick pavilion, later removed.  

In 1753 the estate passed by marriage to the Dukes of Devonshire, and in 1788 the fifth Duke demolished Old Chiswick House and enlarged the villa by adding substantial wings. Both the fifth and sixth Dukes remodelled Burlington’s gardens. From the 1860s onwards the Devonshires let the house to a series of wealthy tenants, but gradually moved the historic contents to Chatsworth House. Between 1892 and 1929 the house was used as a private mental hospital. 

In 1929 the reduced estate was sold to Middlesex County Council. In 1948, ownership of the house passed to the Ministry of Works, which embarked on a restoration campaign aimed at returning the villa to its original size and design and the gardens to their original layout. The house and the gardens are now under the stewardship of an independent trust set up in 2005, Chiswick House and Gardens Trust, set up to oversee the restoration, management and protection of this important historic site. The Trust, a registered charity, was created jointly by English Heritage and LB Hounslow in order to integrate the management of Chiswick House and Gardens. Under the chairmanship of Mr Rupert Hambro, the Trust is dedicated to the protection and enhancement of this outstanding listed Grade I listed villa and registered Grade I gardens, which have been enjoyed as a public park since 1929.