Camden Place

Camden Place
The building in June 2011
Location	Camden Park Road, Bromley
Coordinates	51°24′40″N0°03′56″E / 51.4112°N 0.0655°E / 51.4112; 0.0655
Built	1717
Architectural style(s)	Neoclassical style
Listed Building – Grade II*
Official name	Camden Place
Designated	25 August 1954
Reference no.	1064325
Shown in Bromley

Camden Place is a country house in Chislehurst in Bromley, London, England. The house, which is now used as the club house of Chislehurst Golf Club, is a Grade II* listed building. ^[1]

History

The dining room at Camden Place

The house was commissioned to replace an earlier house which was occupied by the antiquary William Camden, who lived there from c. 1609 until his death in 1623. ^[2]

The present house was designed in the neoclassical style, built in buff brick and completed in 1717. ^[3] It was expanded in the late 18th and very early 19th centuries to a design by the architect, George Dance the Younger. ^[4] The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage of seven bays facing southwest. The central bay was canted forward and there was a curved projection on the left of the main frontage. It was fenestrated on both floors with casement windows and, at roof level, there was a balustraded parapet with finials. ^[1]

The house was acquired by the Attorney General for England and Wales, Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden, in 1760, by the merchant, Thomson Bonar in 1805 and by the financier, Henry Rowles, in the 1830s. ^[5] The young Louis-Napoleon of France had a romantic relationship with Rowles' daughter, Emily, in the 1830s. ^[6] The house was acquired by a lawyer, Nathaniel William John Strode, in the mid-19th century and parts of it were then leased out. ^[7] Strode fitted out the dining room with fine panelling recovered from the Château de Bercy when it was demolished in 1861. ^[8]

Louis-Napoleon became emperor Napoleon III of France in 1852, but after defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, he was exiled to the UK, rented rooms at Camden Place, and lived there with the former empress, Eugénie, and their son, the Prince Imperial. ^[9] Queen Victoria visited them there and was received in their dining room. ^{[10] [11]}

Following the former emperor's death in 1873, there was an official lying-in-state at Camden Place. ^[12] His body and that of his son, the Prince Imperial, were originally buried in St Mary's Catholic Church in Chislehurst, before being removed to St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough. ^[13]

Eugénie continued to live at Camden Place until she moved to Farnborough in 1881. ^[14] The house then became the club house of Chislehurst Golf Club in 1894. ^[15]

See also

• Grade I and II* listed buildings in the London Borough of Bromley

References

1. Historic England. "Camden Place (1064325)". National Heritage List for England . Retrieved 14 August 2025.
2. Herendeen, Wyman H. (2008) [2004]. "Camden, William (1551–1623)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/4431.(Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
3. "Camden Place". Historic Houses. Retrieved 14 August 2025.
4. Cherry, Bridget; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2002). London 2: South (Buildings of England Series). Yale University Press. p. 180. ISBN   978-0300096514.
5. "Residence of Camden Place". Chislehurst Golf Club. Retrieved 14 August 2025.
6. "A French Emperor moves to Chislehurst". Historic Houses. 9 March 2021. Retrieved 14 August 2025.
7. "Interior of Camden Place in Camden Park Road". London Picture Archive. Retrieved 14 August 2025.
8. "Camden Place, (Chislehurst, UK) the last home of Napoleon III". Fondation Napoléon. Retrieved 14 August 2025.
9. Williams, Roger Lawrence (2015). The Mortal Napoleon III. Princeton University Press. p. 160. ISBN   978-1400871827.
10. Girard, Louis (1986). Napoléon III. Paris: Fayard. pp. 497–498. ISBN   978-2-0127-9098-8.
11. Boullemier, Tony (2012). Leonie and the Last Napoleon. Troubador Publishing. p. 309. ISBN   978-1848763722.
12. Legge, Edward (1910). The Empress Eugenie, 1870-1910. Harper & Brothers. pp. 102–103. ISBN   978-1347099018.
13. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Chislehurst"  . Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 247.
14. "Napoleon III, Emperor of France". The Chislehurst Society. Archived from the original on 7 February 2019.
15. "Chislehurst Golf Club". The Social Golfer. Retrieved 14 August 2025.