Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chiswick House
Great Chertsey Rd • House April-Oct Mon-Wed & Sun 10am-5pm • EH • £5.90 Gardens Daily 7am-dusk • Free • T 020 8995 0508,
W chgt.org.uk • Chiswick train station from Waterloo or ! Turnham Green
Chiswick House is a perfectly proportioned classical villa, designed by Richard Boyle,
third Earl of Burlington, in the 1720s, and set in a beautifully landscaped garden.
Like its prototype, Palladio's Villa Capra near Vicenza, the house was purpose-built as a
“Temple to the Arts” - an extension to Burlington's adjacent Jacobean mansion (which
was torn down in 1788). Here, amid his fine art collection, Burlington used to
entertain such friends as Swift, Handel and Pope, who lived in nearby Twickenham.
Guests and visitors (who could view the property on payment of an admission fee
even in Lord Burlington's day) would originally have ascended the quadruple staircase
and entered the piano nobile through the magnificent Corinthian portico. The public
entrance today is via the lower floor , where the earl had his own private rooms and kept
his extensive library. Here, you can pick up an audioguide, watch a short video and
peruse an exhibition on the history of the house and grounds.
Entertaining took place on the upper floor , a series of cleverly interconnecting rooms,
each enjoying a wonderful view out onto the gardens - all, that is, except the Tribunal ,
the domed octagonal hall at the centre of the villa, where the house's finest paintings
and sculptures are displayed, just as they would have been in Burlington's day. The
other rooms retain much of their rich decor, in particular the ceilings, designed by
William Kent. The most sumptuous is the Blue Velvet Room , decorated in a deep
Prussian blue, with eight pairs of heavy gilded brackets holding up the ceiling.
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The gardens
Like the villa, the house's extensive gardens were influenced by descriptions of the
gardens of classical Rome and, in their turn, became the inspiration for the English
landscape garden . You can admire the northwest side of the house from the stone
benches of the exedra, a set of yew-hedge niches harbouring lions and copies of
Roman statuary , and overlooking a smooth carpet of grass, punctuated by urns and
sphinxes, that sit under the shadow of two giant cedars of Lebanon. Other highlights
include England's first mock ruin - the Kent-designed cascade - and the network of
narrow yew-hedge avenues, each one ending at some diminutive building or statue.
One of the most remarkable focal points is the grassy amphitheatre , by the side of the
lake, centred on an obelisk in a pond and overlooked by an Ionic temple. To the north
of the villa, beside a section of the gardens' old ha-ha , stands a grand stone gateway
designed by Inigo Jones, and close by a café . Beyond lies a large conservatory , built to
grow peaches, grapes and pineapples and now stuffed with camellias. It looks out onto
the formal Italian Garden , laid out in the early nineteenth century by the sixth Duke
of Devonshire, who also established a zoo (now gone) featuring an elephant, giraffe,
elks and emus.
Hogarth's House
Hogarth's Lane, Great West Rd • Tues-Sun noon-5pm • Free • T 020 8994 6757, W hounslow.info • Free • Chiswick train station from
Waterloo or ! Turnham Green
Hogarth's House , where the artist spent each summer with his wife, sister and
mother-in-law from 1749 until his death in 1764, sits by the thunderous A4 road.
Nowadays it's di cult to believe Hogarth came here, from Leicester Square, for “peace
and quiet”, but in the eighteenth century the house was almost entirely surrounded by
countryside. Compared to nearby Chiswick House, whose pretentious Palladianism
and excess epitomized everything Hogarth loathed the most, the domesticity here is
something of a relief. Among the scores of Hogarth's engravings, you can see copies of
his satirical series - An Election , Marriage à la Mode , A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's
Progress - and compare the modern view from the parlour with the more idyllic scene
in Mr Ranby's House .
 
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