HOUSE HISTORY: discovering stories
A 16TH CENTURY PEARL
One of my most memorable historic houses that I have had the privilege to investigate is Leyden House, in Mortlake, West London.
I carried out the documentary research for the then owners who had lived in the house for over 30 years. They obviously hadn’t lost their love and fascination for the old building; which is not surprising. It’s a distinctive house that sits close to Chiswick Bridge on the south bank of the Thames and therefore on the finish line of the Oxford/Cambridge boat race.
The Grade II listing dates it to the 18th century but, while the house certainly sports a design similar to the 1700s, my research revealed that the earliest surviving records for the house go back to 1617 when the house (then part of The Manor of Wimbledon) was surveyed by the celebrated London surveyor Ralph Treswell.
Extensive restoration work in the early 1960s (a documentary record of which I found) also revealed physical features of the building that indicated a 16th century origin, including hidden brickwork, the particular construction of the chimney stacks, as well as oyster shells found beneath the floorboards (a popular 16th century form of insulation).
You can imagine that over four centuries there have been quite a few occupants of the house. My research at the local archives at Richmond and at The National Archives at Kew, revealed that the house had been home to an array of politicians,
