Ham House
Ham House is a 17th-century house set in formal gardens on the bank of the River Thames in Ham, south of Richmond in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The original house was completed in 1610 by Thomas Vavasour, an Elizabethan courtier and Knight Marshal to James I. It was then leased, and later bought, by William Murray, a close friend and supporter of Charles I. The English Civil War saw the house and much of the estate sequestrated, but Murray's wife Catherine regained them on payment of a fine. During the Protectorate his daughter Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart on her father's death in 1655, successfully navigated the prevailing anti-royalist sentiment and retained control of the estate.
The house achieved its greatest period of prominence following Elizabeth's second marriage—to John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale, in 1672. The Lauderdales held important roles at the court of the restored Charles II, the Duke being a member of the Cabal ministry and holder of major positions in Scotland, while the Duchess exercised significant social and political influence. They began an ambitious program of development and embellishment at Ham. The house was almost doubled in size and equipped with private apartments for the Duke and Duchess, as well as princely accommodation suites for visitors. The house was furnished to the highest standards of courtly taste and decorated with "a lavishness which transcended even what was fitting to their exalted rank". The Lauderdales accumulated notable collections of paintings, tapestries and furniture, and redesigned the gardens and grounds to reflect their status and that of their guests.
After the Duchess's death, the property passed through the line of her descendants. Occasionally, major alterations were made to the house, such as the reconstruction undertaken by Lionel Tollemache, 4th Earl of Dysart, in the 1730s. For the most part, later generations of owners focused on the preservation of the house and its collections. The family did not retain the high position at court held by the Lauderdales under Charles II, and a strain of family eccentricity and reserve saw the fifth Earl refuse a request from King George III to visit Ham. On the death of the 9th Earl – the last Earl to live at Ham – in 1935, the house passed to his second cousin, Lyonel; he and his son, Major Lyonel Tollemache, donated it to the National Trust in 1948. During the second half of the 20th century the house and gardens were opened to the public, and were extensively restored and researched. The property has become a popular filming location for cinema and television productions, which make use of its period interiors and gardens.
The house is built of red brick, and was originally constructed to a traditional Elizabethan era H-plan; the southern, garden frontage was infilled during the Lauderdales' rebuilding. The architect of Vavasour's house is unknown although drawings by Robert Smythson and his son John exist. The Lauderdales first consulted William Bruce, a cousin of the Duchess, but ultimately employed William Samwell to undertake their rebuilding. Ham retains many original Jacobean and Caroline features and furnishings, most in an unusually fine condition, and is a "rare survival of 17th-century luxury and taste". The house is a Grade I listed building and received museum accreditation from Arts Council England in 2015. Its park and formal gardens are listed at Grade II*. Bridget Cherry, in the revised London: South Pevsner published in 2002, acknowledged that the exterior of Ham was "not as attractive as other houses of this period", but noted the interior's "high architectural and decorative interest". The critic John Julius Norwich described the house as a "time machine – enclosing one in the elegant, opulent world of van Dyck and Lely".
The builders
Early years
In the early 17th century the manors of Ham and Petersham were bestowed by James I on his son, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. The original construction of Ham House was completed in 1610 by Sir Thomas Vavasour, Knight Marshal to James I. The Thames-side location was ideal for Vavasour, allowing him to move between the palaces at Richmond, Hampton, London and Windsor as his court role required. It originally comprised an H-plan layout consisting of nine bays and three storeys, as shown in a 1649 miniature by Alexander Marshal, but the lack of estate documentation makes it impossible to verify the names of persons involved in the design and construction of the house. Robert Smythson's survey drawing of the house and gardens is a key record of the early structure. Prince Henry died in 1612, and the lands passed to James's second son, Charles, several years before his coronation in 1625. After Vavasour's death in 1620, the house was granted to John Ramsay, 1st Earl of Holderness, until he died in 1626.William Murray, 1st Earl of Dysart (1643–55)
In 1626, Ham House was leased to William Murray, courtier, a close childhood friend and alleged whipping boy of Charles I. Murray's initial lease was for 39 years and, in 1631, a further 14 years were added. When Gregory Cole, a neighbouring landowner, had to sell his property in Petersham as part of the enclosure of Richmond Park in 1637, he made over the remaining leases on his land to Murray. Shortly afterwards William and his wife Katherine engaged the services of skilled craftsmen, including the artist Francis Cleyn and the painter Matthew Goodrich, to begin improvements on the house as befitting a Lord of the Manors of Ham and Petersham. He extended the Great Hall and added an arch that leads to the ornate cantilever staircase to create a processional route for guests as they approached the dining room on the first floor. He remodelled the Long Gallery and added the adjoining Green Closet that was influenced by Charles I's own "Cabbonett Room" at Whitehall Palace, to which Murray had donated two pieces. As part of the Whitehall Group, Murray would have been in touch with the latest tastes in art and architecture at court.In 1640 William was also granted a lease on the nearby Manor of Canbury, now in Kingston upon Thames, but in the run-up to civil war in 1641 he signed over the house to Katherine and his four daughters, appointing trustees to safeguard the estate for them. The principal of these was Thomas Bruce, 1st Earl of Elgin, a relative of his wife and an important Scottish Presbyterian, Parliamentarian supporter and ally of the Puritan party in London. Murray was raised to the peerage as Earl of Dysart in 1643, although his elevation appears not to have been confirmed at that time. As a Scottish title, the earldom could be inherited by daughters, as well as by sons.
Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, the house and estates were sequestrated, but persistent appeals by Katherine regained them in 1646 on payment of a £500 fine.
Katherine skilfully defended her ownership of the house throughout the Civil War and Commonwealth, and it remained in the family's possession despite Murray's close ties with the Royalist cause. Katherine died at Ham on 18 July 1649. The Parliamentarians sold off much of the Royal Estate, including the Manors of Ham and Petersham. These, including Ham House, were bought for £1,131.18s on 13 May 1650 by William Adams, the steward acting on behalf of Murray's eldest daughter, Elizabeth and her husband Sir Lionel Tollemache, 3rd Baronet of Helmingham Hall, Suffolk. Ham House became Elizabeth and Lionel's primary residence, as Murray was in exile abroad, predominantly in France.
Elizabeth, Countess of Dysart (1655–98) and Sir Lionel Tollemache Bt. (1640–69)
Elizabeth and Lionel Tollemache were married in 1648. He was from a family of Royalists who had estates in Suffolk, Northamptonshire and London, and they celebrated their union at Ham with a display of arms that can be seen in the spandrels of the arch above the main entrance to the house: on the left an earl's coronet above the Tollemache horse's head and on the right the Tollemache argent a fret sable quartering Murray.When her father died in 1655 Elizabeth became the 2nd Countess of Dysart in her own right, but at that time during the Interregnum the title would have held little prestige. Of far more interest to the Protectorate authorities was the matter of Elizabeth's allegiance. Her parents' activities during the Civil War had raised suspicion among both Royalists and Parliamentarians, and similar speculation attached to Elizabeth, which was heightened when she began a close relationship with Oliver Cromwell in the early 1650s. Her family and connections provided the perfect cover for an agent, especially a double agent, and her movements were closely monitored by both Royalist and Parliamentarian spies.
Between 1649 and 1661, Elizabeth bore eleven children, five of whom survived to adulthood; Lionel, Thomas, William, Elizabeth, and Catherine. Elizabeth and Lionel made few substantial changes to the house during this busy time. On the Restoration in 1660, Charles II rewarded Elizabeth with a pension of £800 for life and, while many of the Parliamentarian sales of Royal lands were put aside, Elizabeth retained the titles to the Manors of Ham and Petersham. In addition, in about 1665, following William's death, Lionel was granted freehold of of land in Ham and Petersham including that surrounding the house and a 61-year lease of of demesne lands. The grant was made in trust to Robert Murray for the daughters of the, then, late Earl of Dysart, "in consideration of the service done by the late Earl of Dysart and his Daughter, and of the losses sustained by them by the enclosure of the New Park". Lionel died in 1669, leaving his Ham and Petersham estate to Elizabeth along with Framsden Hall in Suffolk, which had been her jointure on their marriage.
Elizabeth and John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale (1645–82)
Elizabeth may have become acquainted with John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale at some time in the 1640s, when he was one of the Scottish Commissioners on the Committee of Both Kingdoms who petitioned for her father's release on charges of treason in 1646. She felt sufficient gratitude towards him to claim in later years that she appealed to Cromwell to show clemency following his capture after the Battle of Worcester, a gesture Maitland repaid in his will when he left her £1,500 in gold for "preserving my life when I was a prisoner in the year 1651". They became much closer following the death of her husband and he began visiting Ham regularly. Already a favourite of the King, he was appointed High Commissioner for Scotland in August 1669 which, on top of his political influence as Secretary of State and participation in Charles's Cabal ministry, made him one of the most powerful men in the country. In 1671 Lauderdale was granted by Letters patent full freehold rights to the Manors of Ham and Petersham and the 289 acres of leased land. In 1672 Elizabeth and Lauderdale were married, and soon afterwards he was created Duke of Lauderdale and Knight of the Garter. With Lauderdale's part in the Cabal Ministry, the family remained close to the heart of court intrigue.As Duchess and consort to a very political Duke, Elizabeth had risen to the peak of Restoration society where she could exercise her many talents and interests. Image was paramount and the Lauderdales began a programme of aggrandisement of their properties – Elizabeth consulted her cousin, William Bruce, and Maitland commissioned William Samwell, respectively amateur and professional architects. Ham was extended on the south front with an enfilade of rooms created each side of a central axis around a new downstairs Dining Room. Most grand houses at that time had apartments laid out in this way, comprising a suite of rooms approached one through the other. The original plan was to create the Duchess's apartments to the left and the Duke's to the right, she having two closets for privacy and entertainment and he having a staircase connecting his bedroom to the library above, but Elizabeth appears to have changed her mind while the rooms were being built and eventually each came to have a bedchamber within the other's apartment. This alteration may have been due to the installation of a bathroom downstairs which had to be near the kitchen in the basement at the Duke's end of the house. Despite the swap of bedchambers, she retained her original closets at the east side of the house.
Closets formed an exclusive and very private end to the sequence into which only the most important guests were invited. Visitors knew that they would only progress through the rooms according to their rank or significance in society: being entertained in one of Elizabeth's closets would have been an honour. Her White Closet was designed for entertaining and had a private door opening onto the Cherry Garden. It was decorated in the most advanced tastes of the day and according to the 1679 inventory that it had "one Indian furnace for tee garnish'd wt silver", a luxury at a time when tea was only beginning to be drunk outside of exclusive royal residences. For this reason, too Elizabeth kept her tea secure in a "Japan box" in her adjoining Private Closet.
Upstairs the existing State Apartments were extended with the addition of a State Bedroom apartment. The bedchamber itself was being referred to as "the Queen's Bedchamber" in 1674 which suggests that Queen Catherine of Braganza, a friend of Elizabeth's, had occupied it at least once. This was the most important room in the house and the focal point towards which one progressed on the first floor. Another benefit of transforming the house from single to double-pile – a "pile" is a row of rooms, single-pile houses have only one row while double-pile houses are two rows deep, often with a corridor between the rows – had been that it allowed the creation of hidden passages and staircases for servants who could now enter rooms via discreet jib doors rather than by moving through one room to get to another. Michael Wilson notes the "positive warren" of such passages at Ham.
The eldest daughter of Elizabeth and Lionel, also named Elizabeth, married Archibald Campbell, 1st Duke of Argyll in Edinburgh in 1678. Their first child, John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll, was born at Ham House in 1680; their second son, Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll was born there a few years later.
The glorious years for the Lauderdales began to wane in 1680 when the Duke had a stroke and his influence declined. On his death in 1682 he left the Ham and Petersham property to Elizabeth, thereby securing the estate for the Tollemache dynasty. However, Elizabeth also inherited her husband's debts including mortgages on his former properties in England and Scotland and her latter years were marred by a financial dispute with her brother-in-law, Charles Maitland, 3rd Earl of Lauderdale. Even the intervention of the newly crowned James II failed to reconcile them and the matter was finally settled in her favour in the Scottish courts in 1688. Although this may have suppressed Elizabeth's lavish lifestyle, she went on to make further alterations to the house at Ham, opening the Hall ceiling and creating the Round Gallery in about 1690. As she got older her movements became restricted by gout and she rarely went upstairs, living mainly in what had been the Duke's apartments, but her intellect remained and she liked to be kept informed about events at court and in politics. Elizabeth Maitland continued to live at Ham House until her death in 1698 at the age of 72.