Osterley, Hounslow/Ealing
The location of one of London’s most magnificent stately homes, one-and-a-half miles west of Brentford
Osterley was first recorded in 1274, and the name derives from Old English words meaning ‘sheepfold clearing’. Sir Thomas Gresham, commercial agent and financial adviser to Elizabeth I, bought the manor of Osterley in 1562 and replaced the existing farmhouse with ‘a faire and stateley brick house’. The banker Sir Francis Child acquired the house in 1713 and around 1760 his grandson commissioned Robert Adam (and probably others) to remodel the exterior and create lavishly furnished and decorated new rooms inside, while the grounds were landscaped and endowed with a chain of lakes. By the beginning of the 19th century Osterley Park House had ceased to be the Child family’s main place of residence.
The neighbouring localities, formerly known as Thornbury Common and Scrattage, were occupied by farms, cottages and brickyards when Osterley and Spring Grove station opened on Thornbury Road in 1883. The common lay between Osterley Park and Spring Grove, while Scrattage was to its west. Little change took place until the construction of the Great West Road (A4), when suburban development began with luxury semi-detached houses on Wood Lane. Each had its own quarter-acre plot and was priced at a steep £2,500. The present station, a classic Charles Holden design, opened in 1934, and the old building is now a bookshop. In 1935 St Francis’s Church was built on the Great West Road.
In 1939 George Child Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey, opened Osterley Park House to the public and ten years later gave it to the National Trust. The house is nowadays open to the public on most days in summer and at weekends in winter, and rooms can be hired for wedding ceremonies and receptions. In a ground-breaking move, the National Trust has authorized its use for same-sex blessing ceremonies.
Osterley Park, now split in two by the M4 motorway, includes woods, farms, sporting facilities and an ornamental lake. Brunel University’s Osterley campus lies south of the Great West Road. North of the Grand Union Canal, which curves round the north of Osterley Park and along its eastern border, parts of the St Bernard’s Hospital site have been redeveloped as Osterley Views and Osterley Gardens.
Osterley Park has been a popular location for filming country house dramas, including the 1999 version of Mansfield Park.
