This weekend (in lovely weather) I tripped out of London to stay with the delightful parents near a place called Chertsey which is by the Thames, West of London. As well as the usual excess booze we made a visit to Osterley Park, a National Trust property that I have been meaning to visit the entire time I’ve lived in London but despite it actually being on the Piccadilly line have never actually made it… So it took 2 people travelling across the country and setting up camp practically outside the place to make me bother to journey there, pretty poor. Anyway, the decade it took for me to get there was definitely worth the wait as it’s a really lovely house.
The house was originally built in the Tudor era and the red brick façade which was then remodelled by the great Adams retains much of this initial design influence. The gardens still have a specific Tudor walled garden when they grow flowers in colourful rows to decorate the house. The house was bought by the Child family sometime in the 18th century to be used as a pleasure house and they enlisted Robert Adams to remodel the interiors and the entrance portico. How bloody fab to have a pleasure house up the Thames that you could sail to upon a weekend. Like Chiswick House, also used as a summer residence, the house feels as if it were designed for summer living with cool airy rooms decorated, for the most part, in the classic Adams pastel pallet, perfect for hot afternoons in no doubt suffocating formal wear.
Many of the rooms still retain the original furniture which Adams also designed and you can see his signature motif, a bulls head, (or was it rams head ??) on several tables he designed for the rooms as well as fireplaces. The Eating room was particularly lovely with intricate plaster moulding done in beautiful shades of pale pink and blue – the sort of room you would happily die in!
Another fabulous room was the tapestry room, although you would get a hell of a headache being in there too long. The tapestries were designed by Boucher and done by the Gobelins factory in Paris, although I am assuming they were ordered from pre-existing tapestry designs as opposed to actually commissioning the guy. If I had decided to design an 18th century interior where money is no object I guess I would expect a bit of rococo loveliness as well!!
Continuing the trip through 18th century tastes is the Etruscan dressing room whose beautiful painted decorations were hidden for so long by soot from fires and gaslights that it was covered in black and totally forgotten. It was only when restoration work took place and they decided to clean the walls that they found the design hidden there – and how totally gorgeous. After the resplendent lavishness of the state rooms including the tapestries this is like a beautiful calming rush towards the French revolution. As much as I LOVE LOVE LOVE Neoclassicism I wish it wasn’t so forever bound to decapitation tough. Anyway this room was purportedly (i.e. according to Wikipedia) inspired by the Etruscan vases in Sir William Hamilton's collection, illustrations of which had recently been published.
The gardens were also very nice. We particularly liked the Temple of Pan which was bigger than my flat times two and was clearly used as a shagging shop. This was a pleasure house after all… The Garden House was also lovely.
Other interesting highlights of the trip were seeing them setting up some of the rooms and a marquis outside for a wedding, VERY NICE, and seeing the bride arrive which is always a terribly exciting opportunity to gawp gawp gawp. Also apparently they recently filmed interiors for Bruce Wayne’s mansion for the new Batman film in some of the rooms and changed the décor from yellow to grey for the occasion apparently. Anyway definitely worth a day trip from London on the Piccadilly line for this one. Ham House and Hampton Court next time!
