In records prior to 1800 their names made it is easy to confuse the house that stood here with another which stood at what is now Pitzhanger Park, about a mile to the north.
In 1768, George Dance was commissioned to build a two-storey extension on the south side of the house on the site at the time, and a young apprentice, John Soane, worked on it. has a watercolour of the, quite plain, house at this time, from the west. All but that extension is now lost.
32 years later, in 1800, the house came up for sale and Soane bought it. By 1804 he had demolished and rebuilt in his unique style much of the older parts of the house, but he retained the south wing, the interior of which was designed in the Adam style.
However the house was not successful for his family so in 1810 the house and grounds were sold. There were a number of owners till it was purchased by Spencer Horatio Walpole and in 1843 it became home for his wife's four unmarried sisters who moved here from Elm Grove. The last surviving sister, Frederika, died in 1900 aged 95, at which the house was sold by her nephew, Sir Spencer Walpole (SHW's son), to Ealing.
From then until 1984 parts of it at least served as a free public library. Following a restoration it can now be visited, indeed should be visited by anyone interested in architecture - it is magnificent.
Sources: , , the .
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