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History of the House and Gardens

Chiswick House and Gardens has a long and unique history that we have set out here in order that visitors are aware of how important the house and gardens are in relation to their place in architecture and landscape gardening. 

Many important people have visited throughout its history including future US Presidents John Adams (1735–1826) and Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826); Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790); the Italian statesman Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882); Russian Tsars Nicholas I (1796–1855) and Alexander I (1777–1825); the king of PersiaQueen Victoria (1819–1901) and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg (1819–61); Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832); Prince Leopold III, Duke of Anhalt-Dessau (1740–1817); Prime Ministers William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) and Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745); Queen Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1683–1737)… the list is endless and even includes the Beatles who visited on 20th May 1966 to shoot promotional films for both sides of their latest 45 RPM single, "Paperback Writer" and "Rain". 

At Chiswick in west London, overlooking the River Thames, a modest seventeenth century house underwent a radical rebuilding programme under the direction of Richard Boyle, the 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork (1694 -1753). By the age of 32,  Lord Burlington was an accomplished architect, and with the help of William Kent and others, endeavoured to express his personal vision of antiquity in the grounds at Chiswick.


Today’s Chiswick House and Gardens are mostly the creation of Richard Boyle, often referred to as ‘The Architect Earl’. The House is an internationally renowned neo-palladian masterpiece, and the gardens widely considered to be the first expression of the British Landscape Garden Movement. The overall plot, now 65 acres, was smaller in 1729, when the villa was completed, and the subsequent purchases of adjoining land by his heirs has added to, but did not significantly change, the Earl’s early vision. Lord Burlington was an intellectual, a leader of early 18th century thinking: Horace Walpole referred to him as “Apollo of the Arts”.

 
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18th Century

In the early 18th Century, when the present Chiswick House was built, Chiswick was a small riverside village

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19th Century

Chiswick House was let to a series of tenants in the later 19th Century

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20th Century

Generations of Chiswick residents have grown up with the park as a backdrop to their lives

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21st Century

The £12m project to return the historic parts of the Gardens to Lord Burlington's vision is a mixture of regeneration, restoration and conservation.