Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/703

 KINGSTON HUNDRED

��white marble fireplace and an enriched ceiling. The floor is of the basket pattern parquetry. The upper floors of the house are occupied by the bedchambers, &c. The kitchen, servants' rooms, and offices are for the greater part in the basement. An adequate description of the wonderful collection of furniture, china, &c., of which the house is literally full, would far exceed the limits of space here available.

The gardens and terraces are well laid out. In the forecourt inclosed by the north wings are two terrace walks, one above the other, with flights of stone steps leading up to the main doorway. The drive before these terraces is inclosed by side walls brought out with a curved sweep from the wings ; in these walls are niches containing busts of Roman emperors, &c., like those in the front of the house. In the middle of the courtyard is a recumbent statue of a river deity representing the Thames. The front of the courtyard (towards the river) is closed by an iron railing with large iron gates. On the south side is a long gravel terrace raised some feet above the large grass lawn ; on the other side of the lawn are some ancient Scotch fir-trees said to be the first planted in England, and beyond them an entrance with large iron gates of the late i yth century, now never opened. The ilex-oak walk west of the lawn leads through into another inclosed garden and contains a marble statue of the dancing Bacchus. The kitchen gardens lie to the south and west of this court. North of it are the former orangery buildings, now used as a laundry. The kitchen court is on the west side of the building, having various out- buildings about it, and leading from it ; farther west past the laundry is the drive from the road through the stables, which were rebuilt at the end of the 1 8th century with some of the old material.

In a document dated 1266 mention is made of an ancient hamlet called SUDBROOK. 6 Later in 1550 there is record of a suit as to the ownership of half a tenement called ' Underhylle ' and half a tenement called ' Sudbrooke.' These premises, which were copyhold of the manor of Petersham, included a house and 30 acres of land, meadow, and pasture in Petersham.' At a court held in 1637 a customary cottage in Sudbrook, with a parcel of pasture and part of a close, was surrendered by Thomas Cole and John Yeates to the use of John Hewson and William Bell in payment of certain sums to the poor of Petersham, Ham, and West Sheen. 8

The present house, known as Sudbrook Lodge, with its surrounding park, was the residence of John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, who died there in 1743." His mother was Elizabeth, elder daughter of Sir Lionel Tollemache and the Countess of Dysart, and he was born at Ham House. From him it passed to his eldest daughter and co-heir Caroline, created in 1767 Baroness of Greenwich, who married first Francis Scott, Earl of Dalkeith, eldest son and heir apparent of Francis, second Duke of Buccleuch. Lord Dalkeith died in April 1750, before his father, and at his wife's death in 1794 Sudbrook descended to

��PETERSHAM

their son Henry, third Duke of Buccleuch. He sold the property to Sir Robert Horton, who sold it to the Crown. The house is now occupied by the Richmond Golf Club. It was erected early in the 1 8th century, and consists of two square wings con- nected by a large central hall, on either side of which was a portico with Corinthian columns and balustraded parapet. The south portico was closed in later with brick walls built between the columns, and now serves as a smoking-room. The hall (now the dining-room) extends the height of two stories ; it has a marble fireplace with a bevelled mirror, over which are the Duke of Argyll's arms. The walls are divided into panels by fluted Corin- thian pilasters with a rich cornice, over which is a cove with circular lights and panels. The doorheads in the hall are carved with trophies of arms. The doorways in the later hall to the north of the large hall also have carved architraves and heads. There are stairs at both ends of the building with twisted balusters, &c. A double flight of stone steps leads up to both main entrances. A later wing, connected to the main house by a long narrow passage, extends to the northwards, east of it.

Another once-famous mansion in Petersham was that known as PETERSH4M LODGE, which was purchased by Charles I of Gregory Cole. 10 In 1 660 Charles II granted the office of keeper of the house or lodge and the walk at Petersham, within the Great Park near Richmond, to Ludowick and John Carlisle," who in 1662-3 surrendered their right in the same to Thomas Panton and Bernard Grenville ; " and in 1671 the same keepership, with an annual pension of $o, was granted for life to Lord St. John and his son Charles Paulet." In 1686 the mansion-house called Petersham Lodge, with all out-houses, brew- houses, and dove-houses belonging, and the green before the house in the north-west corner of the New Park, containing 1 5 acres and bounded on the east by the thick covert under the mount called King Henry's Mount, was granted by James II to his nephew Viscount Cornbury.' 4 This mansion in 1721, being then the property of the Earl of Rochester, was entirely destroyed by fire, the damage being computed at between 40,000 and 50,000, and including the destruction of the library of the famous Earl of Clarendon, 15 grandfather of the Earl of Rochester. It was rebuilt by William, Earl of Harrington, 1 ' created in 1 742 Viscount Petersham, after a design of the Earl of Burlington ; and is alluded to in the lines of the poet Thomson :

'The pendent woods that nodding hang o'er Harrington's retreat.'

In 1783 an Act of Parliament was passed to enable George III to grant the inheritance of the capital messuage or mansion-house called Petersham Lodge to Thomas Pitt, first Baron Camelford, who had purchased it from Charles, Earl of Harrington, 17 and by whom it was sold in 1790 to the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV, who occasionally

��' Manning and Bray, Hht. of Surr. i,

439-

7 Star Chamb. Proc. Hen. VIII, bdle. 22, no. 224, 218.

8 Manning and Bray, Hiit. of Surr. i,

+4-

> A newt letter of 1714 (tec Hist. MSS.

��Com. Rtf. Hi, 460) uys that the Duke ot Argyll had lately purchased Ham House of the Earl of Dysart. This ii probably a confusion with Sudbrook.

10 Orig. R. pt. ii, 2 Ja. II, rot. 44 j Ct.R. (P.R.O.), portf. 205, no. i.

11 Cat. S.P. Dom. 1 660-1, p. 282.

529

��"Ibid. 1663-4, pp. 75,95- 18 Ibid. 1671, p. 590. 14 Pat. 2 Jas. II, pt. viii, no. 16. 14 Lysont, Environs of LonJor, i, 399, Supp. 57. " Ibid. W Private Act, 23 Geo. Ill, cap. 13.

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