Roehampton House is a Grade I listed house at Roehampton Lane, Roehampton, London. [1]
What is now the central block of the current building was built between 1710 and 1712 by the architect Thomas Archer and named Roehampton House. It was built on behalf of the merchant Thomas Cary. Cary's father, John, had emigrated to the Colony of Virginia in 1663, and Cary was born there in 1669; both returned to London and by 1690 were running an import and export trading business. [2] Internal features included the surviving 'great staircase' and a two-storey 'painted salon' on the first floor above the entrance hall, decorated with paintings on the walls and ceiling by Sir James Thornhill. [3] On the ground floor, behind the entrance hall, the dining room (with a monumental chimneypiece, reputedly by Grinling Gibbons) extended to the rear (or 'garden front') of the house; it was flanked by a drawing room on one side and a boudoir on the other.
Cary's widow later sold the house to the Earl of Albemarle. In 1771 it was bought by one John Wilkinson, a ship-owner; then his widow sold it in 1791 to William Drake M.P.. [3] The house continued to change hands, and was also rented out to a number of different people, during the first part of the nineteenth century. In 1841 it became the London seat of the Earls of Leven and Melville; the widow of the 9th Earl lived there until her death in 1887.
In the early 20th century the property was bought by Arthur Grenfell, a Canadian financier. [3] From 1910 to 1913, he engaged Sir Edwin Lutyens to make some alterations to the main house and added north and south wings. Historic England notes that these were "a continuation of the Archer style and to a plan close to Archer's original intentions", and that "the Lutyens parts would in themselves merit Grade II*". [1] The estate was again sold in January 1915, to Kenneth Wilson of the Wilson shipping family; but shortly afterwards the house was requisitioned by the War Office for troop accommodation. [3]
Later that year, Mary Eleanor Gwynne Halford successfully petitioned the War Office to release the property to enable her and her fellow trustees to establish a military hospital there, under the patronage of Queen Mary, to rehabilitate amputees and provide them with artificial limbs. Kenneth Wilson allowed the use of the house and its 30 acres of land to the hospital rent free, [4] and in June 1915 the first 25 patients moved in to Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton. [5] At this time the soldiers were accommodated in the main house and the limb manufacturers in the basement; however, with access to the upper floors being difficult for patients, the hospital soon began to expand into single-storey huts that were built on the estate. [3]
After the end of the war, in 1920, Wilson sold the house and its grounds to the hospital, which funded the purchase with assistance from the Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross and the Order of St. John. [6] From 1922 the hospital began to admit civilian amputees as well as war pensioners. In 1925 a new purpose-built hospital complex was opened in the grounds of the house, replacing the temporary huts.
In 1939, by provision of an earlier agreement made with the hospital's Governors, the Ministry of Pensions took over responsibility for the maintenance and administration of the hospital. [6] In February 1944 a high-explosive bomb hit Roehampton House, destroying much of the original interior including the painted salon and dining room. [7] In 1961 the hospital became part of the NHS.
By 1982 the house was being used as nurses' accommodation; following a major refurbishment, completed in 1987, it went on to house offices and other services for the hospital. [8] Queen Mary's Hospital moved to new premises in 2006 and in 2010 [9] Berkeley Group Holdings began work to convert the property into 24 apartments and houses. [10]
Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings. In his biography, the writer Christopher Hussey wrote, "In his lifetime (Lutyens) was widely held to be our greatest architect since Wren if not, as many maintained, his superior". The architectural historian Gavin Stamp described him as "surely the greatest British architect of the twentieth century".
Roehampton is a suburban district in southwest London, in the Putney SW15 postal district, and takes up a far western strip running north to south of the London Borough of Wandsworth. It contains a number of large council house estates and is home to the University of Roehampton.
Wentworth Woodhouse is a Grade I listed country house in the village of Wentworth, in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. It is currently owned by the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust. The building has more than 300 rooms, although the precise number is unclear, with 250,000 square feet (23,000 m2) of floorspace. It covers an area of more than 2.5 acres (1.0 ha), and is surrounded by a 180-acre (73 ha) park, and an estate of 15,000 acres (6,100 ha).
Richmond Park, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, was created by Charles I in the 17th century as a deer park. The largest of London's Royal Parks, it is of national and international importance for wildlife conservation. The park is a national nature reserve, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Area of Conservation and is included, at Grade I, on Historic England's Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England. Its landscapes have inspired many famous artists and it has been a location for several films and TV series.
The University of Roehampton, formerly Roehampton Institute of Higher Education, is a public university in the United Kingdom, situated on three major sites in Roehampton, in the London Borough of Wandsworth. Roehampton was formerly an equal partner, along with the University of Surrey, in the now-dissolved Federal University of Surrey. In 2004, Roehampton became a university. In 2011, it was renamed the University of Roehampton. The university is one of the post-1992 universities.
Lettice Knollys, Countess of Essex and Countess of Leicester, was an English noblewoman and mother to the courtiers Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and Lady Penelope Rich. By her second marriage to Elizabeth I's favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, she incurred the Queen's unrelenting displeasure.
Captain David Euan Wallace, MC PC was a British Conservative politician who was an ally of Neville Chamberlain and briefly served as Minister of Transport during World War II.
Thomas Archer (1668–1743) was an English Baroque architect, whose work is somewhat overshadowed by that of his contemporaries Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor. His buildings are important as the only ones by an English Baroque architect to show evidence of study of contemporary continental, namely Italian, architecture.
George Francis Child-Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey, was an English peer and banker from the Villiers family. Lord Jersey gave one of the family seats, Osterley Park, to the British nation in the late 1940s.
Cockington is a village near Torquay in the English county of Devon. It has old cottages within its boundaries, and is about a half a mile away from Torquay. Bus service 62 calls at the village five times per day (Mon-Fri) and is operated by Torbay Buses.
King Edward's Witley is an independent co-educational boarding and day school, founded in 1553 by King Edward VI and Nicholas Ridley. The School is located in the village of Wormley, Surrey, England, having moved to its present location in 1867. The School became fully co-educational in 1952. As of September 2010, the school has joined the small number of independent schools in the UK which offer the IB Diploma Programme in place of A-Levels in the sixth form. The school re-introduced A-levels as part of the curriculum from September 2015.
Miroslaw (Mirek) Vitali, OBE was a physician specialising in treatment and care of amputees. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1986 in recognition of his outstanding work helping British servicemen who lost limbs in World War II.
Queen Mary's Hospital, formerly Queen Mary's Convalescent Auxiliary Hospitals, is a community hospital in Roehampton in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is run by St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Francis Derwent Wood was a British sculptor.
Redlynch is a village and former manor in the civil parish of Bruton, in the South Somerset district of Somerset, England. The 18th-century church and a folly named The Towers are of architectural interest.
Hugh Colin Smith was an English banker who was Governor of the Bank of England from 1897–99.
Marshcourt, also spelled Marsh Court, is an Arts and Crafts style country house in Marsh Court, near Stockbridge, Hampshire, England. It is constructed from quarried chalk. Designed and built by architect Edwin Lutyens between 1901 and 1905, it is a Grade I listed building. The gardens, designed by Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll, are Grade II* listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
Dover House Estate is one of a number of important London County Council cottage estates inspired by the Garden city movement. The land was previously the estates of two large houses, Dover House and Putney Park House, which were purchased by the London County Council soon after World War I. Dover House was demolished for the new estate, but Putney Park House remains.
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Coordinates: 51°27′15″N0°14′33″W / 51.454141°N 0.24251760°W