Osterley Park
The original building on this site was a manor house built for Sir Thomas Gresham in the sixteenth century. It is known that Queen Elizabeth visited twice, on one occasion suggesting that a hedge would be a good idea in a certain location. It was built overnight! The stable block from this period remains at Osterley Park.
Two hundred years later the manor house was falling into disrepair, when it came into the ownership of Sir Francis Child, a goldsmith turned banker, as a result of a mortgage default. He wanted what could be described as a show house, so he hired Robert Adam to rebuild it, in a neoclassical style, with an ornate portico on the south side leading to a raised courtyard.
The Child family married into the Earls of Jersey, and it was the ninth Earl who gave the house and much of the estate to the National Trust in 1949. It is now open to the public, and contains most of the original furniture in excellent condition.
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