Erection date: 1882
Pitt House Gateway
This arch was probably designed by James Paine and built by Charles Dingley as part of the improvements to Pitt House carried out for the brief residence here of William Pitt Earl of Chatham, 1766 - 1767.
Greater London Council - 1882
1882 - not the date of this plaque which is, from the look of it, much more recent. The GLC only came into existence in 1965 so we cannot explain this date, unless it is a mistake and should read 1982 - quite possibly the year in which the arch was last restored and given support to prevent it being pushed over by the tree.
Overlapping with his time here Pitt was Prime Minister, 30 July 1766 – 14 October 1768, during which period he became unwell, both physically and mentally.
Site: Pitt House Gateway (1 memorial)
NW3, North End Way
The plaque can be seen in our photo at the far left of the structure.
The enormous double beech tree doing its best to bring the gateway down is not on the list of the Great Trees of London. The list is crowd-sourced and this beech is so out the way that probably nobody knew about it. We only found this arch on our third attempt, and we knew it was here. Unpollarded beech trees are , which coincidentally is how long the gateway has been here.
We have placed our pin on the right spot so we hope you find it more easily than we did. We advise you to approach from the path to the east.
This arch was obviously never the main entrance to the house. It looks like it would have provided pedestrian access through a boundary wall. Pitt House had about 3 acres of grounds, mostly to the south. In 1952-4 the house was demolished (and rebuilt), and the LCC acquired most of the grounds. This is presumably when the boundary wall was removed so the grounds became publicly accessible and this gateway was left functionless. See our page for Pitt House for more details.
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