LOOKING BACK WITH DR JONATHAN OATES
One of Pitzhanger Manor’s other
purposes was to serve as a place of
architectural education for his two
surviving sons, who he hoped would
follow in his footsteps as an architect.
John junior had been born in 1786
and George three years later. However,
by 1810 it was clear that John
junior would not make an adequate
architect and George was uninterested.
Combined with the added factor of his
wife’s declining health, Soane decided to
sell the house.
HISTORY QUIZ: WIN BOOK
How much do you know about
our area? Dr Oates has set 20
questions on local history. See how
many you can answer for fun – or
get serious and enter a competition
to win a copy of Dr Oates’s book
Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths
in Ealing.
Have a go at the quiz here
HOCKEY HERITAGE
his family lived in Lincoln’s Inn
Fields. His house there, which he also
designed, can still be visited because
he established it as a museum by act
of Parliament in 1833, requiring that
the building’s stylised interiors be
kept as they were at the time of his
death (which came just four years
later in 1837).
A second house in the ‘countryside’,
as Ealing was then, to entertain guests
outside the city of London would
confirm his position in society and
provide space for his ever-expanding
collection of art and artefacts. In fact,
he first bought a plot of land in Acton in
1800 for this purpose but sold it when
Pitzhanger Manor came up for sale a
year later.
BUILDING A SELF-PORTRAIT
But by then he had carried out extensive
work on both the house and the
grounds (now known as Walpole Park)
and left it transformed.
It was meant to be a kind of selfportrait. He wanted it to preserve
various fragments of antique sculpture
by including them in what he thought
of as being an Italian villa. In the late
18th Century Soane had been on a
Grand Tour in Italy and greatly admired
what he had seen. So, in the grounds
of the house he had built a number of
imitation Roman ruins, recalling what
he had seen. These no longer exist.
Inside the house, now Grade I
listed, there is much that survives
of his vision. The decorations in the
breakfast room drew their inspiration
from wall paintings from a Roman
house that Soane had seen. The
entrance façade is meant to resemble
a triumphal arch, again s