The History of Radnor House

Where better to take a relaxing local stroll and watch the Thames glide by than in Strawberry Hill’s very own green oasis, Radnor Gardens? But how did this riverside retreat come to be here when bricks and mortar stretch along the river up and downstream, and where does the name Radnor come from? The simple answer is that the central part of the gardens was occupied by Radnor House and its grounds. However, to find out how the house got its name we have to go back over 250 years, and well over 300 years to establish the origins of the house.

Land purchase in the 1670s by John Hooker suggests that there may have been a house on the site from that time; certainly by 1699 Elizabeth Hooker, his widow, sold the property to Edward and Elizabeth Cole (related to the Cole brewing family of Twickenham). Ownership passed to various descendants and in 1718 a lease on the house was taken by Gabriel Du Quesne who added land on the other side of Cross Deep in 1719 – the year Alexander Pope settled in his villa a few hundred yards to the north and who similarly added a garden on the other side of the road.

The house at this time was an unremarkable building of two storeys with attic rooms. The earliest view is in a painting by Peter Tillemans from the 1720s, called A Prospect of Twickenham – Radnor House can be seen on the far left. By this time the house was occupied by John Robartes who is recorded as paying rates in 1722. Here we come to the source of the name ‘Radnor’ as Robartes was to succeed to the title of 4th Earl of Radnor in 1741.

Who was John Robartes? He was born in London in 1686, grandson of the 1st Earl and his second wife, and son of Francis Robartes who was an MP and Vice President of the Royal Society. John attended Eton and Christ’s College Cambridge but details of his life are scarce. He was certainly not a prominent public figure like his father and seems to have lived a quiet life in Twickenham. He wrote, in 1746: ‘These parts afford little news. It will not be any to tell you that I still continue to add to and alter my little house and gardens.’

Alter seems an inadequate word; transform would be more appropriate. Probably in several stages he changed the house out of all recognition. A print of 1754 (above) shows the house much enlarged and refaced in a Gothic style. As well as using his inheritance to build, he acquired a considerable art collection, including a Canaletto.

Horace Walpole, who moved to nearby Strawberry Hill in 1747, couldn’t resist some gentle mockery at Radnor’s expense describing the villa as ‘Mabland’, a reference to the Marylebone Gardens which were famed for their decorations and statues. Walpole again: ‘The Chinese summerhouse which you may distinguish in the distant landscape belongs to my Lord Radnor. We pique ourselves upon nothing but simplicity, and have no carvings, gildings, paintings inlayings or tawdry businesses.’ It may just be possible that Walpole, who of course devoted himself to building and collecting, was ‘piqued’ that Radnor had Gothicised his house first.

Radnor had a reputation for being dull but was not so retiring as to shun company. David Garrick, the actor/manager who lived at Hampton, wrote in 1749: ‘My Lord Radnor plag’ud our hearts to dine with him. We at last agreed … but such a dinner, so dressed and so served up in unscoured pewter, we never saw. The wine was worse, but made somewhat better by the dead flies; in short we were both sick and unsatisfied; and rattled the one horse chair home as fast as we could where we recruited our spirits again with a clean cloth, two roasted pigeons and the best currant pie in the Kingdom.’

Radnor remained a bachelor; he died in 1757 and the title became extinct. He left Radnor House to his steward Frederick Atherton Hindley who eventually ran into financial difficulties and was declared bankrupt in 1779; he died in 1781.
The house was bought by Sir Francis Bassett, later Lord Dunstanville; it is at this time that Walpole, still of course at Strawberry Hill, wrote that ‘hay carts have been transporting haycocks from a second crop from the island of Radnor House opposite my windows. The setting sun and the long autumnal shades enriched the landscape to a Claude Lorraine.’

The house then had a succession of owners including, briefly in the very early 1840s, the 2nd Earl of Kilmorey – rather better known for his associations with St Margarets and his mausoleum. Given Kilmorey’s predilection for altering buildings we can only speculate about what he might have done to Radnor House had he stayed; he didn’t, having moved on to Cross Deep House – almost literally next door to Radnor House, in about 1844.

It seems unlikely that he could have done anything more dramatic than the next owner, William Chillingworth, a wine merchant (whose name is remembered in Chillingworth Close off Tower Road). In about 1846/7 he replaced the Gothic facing with an Italianate exterior, perhaps following the new fashion set by Queen Victoria at Osborne House. This further transformation was to be the last and can be seen in this photo from the 1920s. The War Memorial helps to locate the house.

In 1903 agreement was reached between Twickenham UDC and the Middlesex County Council to buy the house and grounds as public open space and on 11 April 1903 the house and grounds were opened by Mrs J H S Lawton, wife of the Chairman of the Council. The hope was expressed that a museum could be established in the house.

After use as a school clinic, the house appears to have been neglected. By 1936 the situation was more urgent and influence was being brought to bear on the Council to take action. Mr Clifford-Smith of the Victoria and Albert Museum said ‘Every effort should be made to preserve it intact. It would be an act of vandalism to attempt to remove any of the decorative features into any other building. There must be few small houses of this character existing in the country.’ In July 1936 Queen Mary visited the house and described it as ‘the finest decorated small house I have
ever seen…’

The Council had agreed to spend £1,000 on restoration in October 1936 and agreed in principle that the 1847 additions should be removed. In March 1938 the MCC agreed to set up the ‘Radnor House Preservation Society Ltd’ to lease the house from the Council and raise money for restoration.

The solution to the Council’s dilemma was rather more dramatic than actually spending money: at 10.30pm on 16th September 1940 a 250kg delayed action high explosive bomb fell through the house; it exploded a few hours later and the house collapsed on its site. Reportedly there was a loud cheer from the Council chamber when the news was relayed.

There is nothing remaining of the house but part of the Bath House, installed by Lord Radnor in the early 1720s, survives resited from its original riverside position.

The site of the house, its grounds and those of a number of neighbouring houses are incorporated into today’s riverside gardens. The channel which separated the ‘bog island’ from the house and gardens (see left) was filled in in 1968 but its outline can still be seen in the grass after prolonged dry weather.