Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
in the hall's Tudor predecessor that Henry VIII's body lay in state en route to Windsor,
and was discovered the next morning surrounded by a pack of hounds happily lapping
the blood seeping from the co
n.
The state apartments
From the austerity of the Great Hall you enter the lavishly decorated
Ante Room
, with
its florid scagliola floor and its green-grey Ionic columns topped by brightly gilded
classical statues. Here, guests could mingle before entering the
State
Dining Room
, a
compromise between the two preceding rooms, richly gilded with a double apse but
otherwise calm in its overall effect. The remaining rooms are warmer and softer in tone,
betraying their Elizabethan origins much more than the preceding ones. The
Red
Drawing Room
retains its original red-silk wall hangings from Spitalfields, upon which
are hung portraits of the Stuarts by Lely, Van Dyck and others, and features a splendid
ceiling studded with over two hundred roundels set within gilded hexagons. Looking
out to the hames, the
Long Gallery
- 136ft by just 14ft - stretches the entire width of
the house, decorated by Adam's busy pink and gold plasterwork and lined with 62
individually painted pilasters. It was in the Long Gallery that Lady Jane Grey was
formally offered the crown by her father-in-law, John Dudley, the owner of Syon at the
time; nine days later they were arrested and eventually beheaded.
22
The private apartments
The private apartments pale in comparison with the first five rooms. However, there are
still one or two highlights to look out for: more works by Lely and Van Dyck, as well as
Gainsborough and Reynolds
in the
Print Room
; a superb Adam fireplace and ornate
fan-patterned ceiling, plus portraits by Holbein and Reynolds, in the
Green Drawing
Room
- still used by the family; and a monster golden Sèvres vase at the foot of the
modest principal
staircase
. Upstairs, past the delicate thousand-piece Sèvres dinner
service, there are several plush bedrooms, including two refurbished in 1832 for the
future Queen Victoria and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, with magnificent
canopied beds, blue silk outside and yellow within.
The gardens
While Adam beautified Syon House, Capability Brown laid out its
gardens
around an
artificial lake, surrounding it with oaks, beeches, limes and cedars. Since then, the
gardens have been further enhanced by still more exotic trees, ranging from an Indian
bean tree to a pagoda tree. Beside the lake, there's a stretch of lawn overlooked by a
Doric column topped by a fibreglass statue of Flora, but the gardens' real highlight is
the crescent-shaped
Great Conservatory
, an early nineteenth-century addition which is
said to have inspired Joseph Paxton, architect of the Crystal Palace.
Osterley Park
Jersey Rd •
Park
Daily 8am-6pm • Free
House
April -Sept Wed-Sun 11am-5pm; Oct Wed-Sun noon-4pm; Nov-March Sat & Sun
noon-4pm • NT • £9 •
T
020 8232 5050,
W
nationaltrust.org.uk •
!
Osterley
Robert Adam redesigned another colossal Elizabethan mansion three miles northwest
of Syon at
Osterley Park
- one of London's largest surviving estate parks, which still
gives the impression of being in the middle of the countryside, despite the M4
motorway to the north of the house. The main approach is along a splendid avenue
of sweet chestnuts to the south, past the National Trust-sponsored
farmhouse
(whose
produce you can buy all year round). The driveway curves past the southernmost of
the park's three lakes, with a Chinese pagoda at one end. Cedars planted in the 1820s
and oaks planted in Victorian times stand between the lake and the house, and to the
north are the grandiose Tudor stables of first owner Thomas Gresham, now converted
into a
café
.
