Kenwood House

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Kenwood House

Elevations of the north and south fronts of Kenwood by Robert and James Adam

The library

Kenwood House (also known as the Iveagh Bequest) is a former stately home in Hampstead Heath in London. It is run by English Heritage.

The original house was early 17th century. The orangery was added in about 1700. In 1754 it was bought by William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield. He commissioned Robert Adam to remodel it from 1764-1779. Adam added the library (one of his most famous interiors) to balance the orangery, and added the Ionic portico at the entrance. In 1793-6 George Saunders added two wings on the north side, and the offices and kitchen buildings and brewery (now the restaurant) to the side.

It was donated to the nation by Lord Iveagh, a member of the Guinness family, when he died in 1927, and opened to the public in 1928. He had bought the house from the Mansfield family in 1925. Unfortunately the furnishing had already been sold by then, so the house is largely empty. Some furniture has since been added. The paintings are from Iveagh's collection. Part of the grounds were bought by the Kenwood Preservation Council in 1922, after there had been threats that it would be sold for building. In the late 1990s the house received approximately 150,000 visitors a year and an estimated 1 million people visited the grounds each year. ^[1]

The film Notting Hill was partly filmed here.

1 Paintings
2 Gardens
3 External links
4 References

[edit] Paintings

Paintings of note include

'The Guitar Player' by Johannes Vermeer
a late Rembrandt self portrait

Self-portrait by Rembrandt (1661) at Kenwood House

Thomas Gainsborough, 'Portrait of Countess Howe' (see Richard Howe, 1st Earl Howe)
Edwin Henry Landseer, 'Hunting in the Olden Times'

Other painters include

There is also a collection of shoe buckles, jewellery and Portrait miniatures.

[edit] Gardens

Monolyth-Empyrean 1953 by Barbara Hepworth

There are fine landscaped gardens around the house, originally designed by Humphry Repton, contrasting to the more wild Hampstead Heath that surrounds the area. There is also a new garden by Arabella Lennox-Boyd.

One third of the area is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, the ancient woodlands. These are home to many birds and insects and the largest Pipistrelle bat roost in London.

There is a Barbara Hepworth, a Henry Moore and a Reg Butler sculpture in the gardens near the house.

Classical music concerts were held by the lake on Saturday evenings every summer from 1951 until 2006, attracting thousands of people to picnic and enjoy the music, scenery and spectacular fireworks. in February 2007, English Heritage capitulated to Camden Council and decided to abandon these concerts after protests from a few influential local residents. The future of Kenwood House is now uncertain, as English Heritage depended on the income from the Lakeside Concerts to maintain the house at a cost of around a million pounds per year.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] External links

[edit] References

^ Kenwood: Information for Tutors and Students of Tourism Studies, English Heritage booklet 2002 revision, page 5.

The Buildings of England London 4: North. Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner. ISBN 0-300-09653-4.
Kenwood: The Iveagh Bequest. Julius Bryant. (English Heritage publication).