History

Syon Park lies on the banks of the Thames some ten miles upstream of London. Through prehistory the river would have undulated to create a mosaic of marshes, creeks and islands, and Syon House stands on one of these prehistoric islands.

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PRE-ABBEY SYON

Syon Park lies on the banks of the Thames some ten miles upstream of London.

Through prehistory the river would have undulated to create a mosaic of marshes, creeks and islands, and Syon House stands on one of these prehistoric islands.

It is likely that the earliest hunters and fishermen would have exploited the potential of the river. Fragments of stone tools and a quantity of Neolithic and Bronze Age artefacts have been discovered, including a fragment of a Late Bronze Age gold bracelet, and the soil profile shows signs indicative of deforestation and agriculture in the Iron Age.

The river has always been a route of communication, but with the arrival of the Romans the main road west from London ran to the north of the Park and a straggling Romano-British settlement developed along the side of the road. With the decline of centralised Roman power, this settlement was abandoned, but Brentford and Isleworth continued as settled communities.

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The Bridgettines were a reforming order who placed great value on austerity and scholarship and Syon Abbey became a great centre of scholarship, with a very fine library. It was a joint communities of nuns and priests and a major site of pilgrimage, where huge congregations would take mass and listen to sermons in English.

Recent archaeological exploration has identified the location of the huge Abbey church as under the meadows between Syon House and the Thames, surrounded by cloisters and outbuildings. A series of courtyards stood on the site of the front lawn of Syon House, large enough to accommodate the considerable numbers of pilgrims who gathered on feast days to take mass and listen to sermons of the priests of Syon.

The great palace of the Tudor dynasty was across the river at Richmond, and there were close links between the Abbey and Henry VIII, Catherine and Mary. However, as the break with Rome gathered momentum, the determined orthodoxy of the priests and nuns of Syon proved a significant obstacle to the king’s plans. One of the priests, Richard Reynolds, was executed for treason in 1535, and Syon was one of the last religious communities to be dissolved. The community left in 1539, but, unusually, many of them chose to go into exile together. Despite a brief return to Syon under Mary I, they maintained their identity and ritual as an English religious community in Holland and Portugal, before finally returning to England in the nineteenth century.

THE BRIDGETTINE
ABBEY OF SYON

The great Abbey at Syon was the only Bridgettine house in England.

The foundation stone was laid by Henry V in 1415, and in little more than a century of existence it reached a position of unique influence and importance, with especially close links to the Tudor dynasty.

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THE ARRIVAL OF THE
PERCY FAMILY

On the dissolution of the Abbey, Syon reverted to royal control, and the funeral cortege of Henry VIII rested at Syon on the journey from London to Windsor, the bloated corpse famously exploding overnight.

Syon then passed to Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset who initiated the process of transforming the Abbey complex into a grand private house. Gardens were laid out and a plant collection was developed by his physician, the radical botanist and equally radical theologian, William Turner.

In 1594 Syon passed by marriage to Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland. By this time the House was essentially the building standing today, and Henry and his son Algernon surrounded it with grand formal gardens in the French style. In 1605 the Earl was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot, and confined in the Tower for seventeen years, where he lived in some style and spent a considerable sum on the refurbishment of Syon.

The Civil War passed Syon in 1642, as the royalist forces marched past on their way to the battle of Brentford, and there were skirmishes around the Park. In 1647 the three younger royal children were kept at Syon, where they were visited by their father from his captivity at Hampton Court.

On the death of the 11th Earl in 1670, the Percy estates passed to his daughter Elizabeth, who married Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset. They were both very active at Court, and Queen Anne gave birth while staying at Syon in 1692. The House was decorated with gilt leather and damask hangings, while its surrounding landscape was dominated by a series of avenues of lime trees, as shown on the Fairchild map of 1741.

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Sir Hugh Smithson and Lady Elizabeth Seymour Percy were leading figures in contemporary society, and would have inherited a house with dated interiors, surrounded by an unfashionable formal landscape. Gardens and House were both in a poor condition.

The solution was a complete redesign of Syon. In one of his first major commissions, the landscape architect Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown swept away the formal landscape to the south and west of the House, replacing it with the open views characteristic of the English Landscape movement. Over the course of twenty years he extended this to the north and west, incorporating farmland to the west into the new park, and creating Pleasure Grounds to the north, both centred on large new ornamental lakes.

In the House the Scottish architect Robert Adam was commissioned to create a series of striking classical interiors, filled with antiquities shipped from Italy. Adam was not able to change the interior layout of the House, and so used a number of architectural devices to create a suitable impression.

ROBERT ADAM AND
‘CAPABILITY’ BROWN

The 7th Duke of Somerset died in 1750, and Hugh and Elizabeth, who were to become the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, inherited the estates.

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THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In the nineteenth century the 3rd Duke of Northumberland started another series of major works at Syon.

Exceedingly wealthy from the proceeds of coal mining and shipping, he extensively reworked the exterior of the House, by cladding the entire structure in Bath stone and adding a Porte Cochere.

Close up of the Syon Park crescent engraved into stone

Syon House corridor focus on wooden wall with engraved pattern

Domestic imperatives were addressed with a new range of kitchens and the construction of the Oak Passage. Outside, the old service buildings were removed, and a fine new range of ornamental stables built, centred on the Riding School with its magnificent steel truss roof. Equally modern technologies were applied to the design of the Great Conservatory, where the use of cast iron allowed for a very large area of glass, and a remarkably delicate structure.

Exotic trees and shrubs started to arrive at Syon from North America in the late eighteenth century, and many of these original introductions still flourish today. The rate of introduction accelerated as fresh areas were opened up by the growth of trade and the work of plant hunters. New discoveries from the Himalayas and China were added to the collection, and in 1833 a German visitor was struck by “a multitude of gigantic exotic trees in the open air”.

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There was bomb damage in 1940, but by the mid-twentieth century Syon was still essentially a privatecountry estate, although the city had long since spread on all sides. Although remaining in private ownership, Syon, like many other great estates, sought to cover maintenance costs through a process of commercialisation.

The House was opened to the public and a major garden festival opened in 1968 to cater to the burgeoning interest in domestic gardening. One of the first garden centres was opened and a series of show gardens, sponsored by magazines and nurseries, were installed throughout. Most of these modern features have now been removed, leaving the essential Syon: a magnificent historic house with very important interiors set in a grand landscape of trees and meadows, of walks and vistas.

MODERN SYON

Through the second half of the nineteenth century Syon House was a private home, although used as a hospital during the First World War.

Black and white group photo of the Red Cross nurses at Syon Park

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RESTORATION WORK

A great historic estate carries significant maintenance obligations.

In recent years, Northumberland Estates have been engaged in a major process of restoration. The whole of Syon House has been re-roofed, with extensive masonry restoration, and the famous Percy Lion on the East Front was restored and re-installed in 2012.

Restoration work at Syon Park, Syon Park lion loaded onto a forklifter truck

Inside Syon House, there is a process of refurbishment which is even more painstaking. The Great Hall has been painted using the original Robert Adam colours, and the Ante Room extensively restored. There are plans to carry out works to the Long Gallery and Red Drawing Room, but the priority is always to carry out any such works to an appropriate standard using original materials and technologies.

Such works have not been limited to Syon House. The important eighteenth century iron bridge across the Outer Lake designed by James Wyatt was extensively restored in 2012-13, and modern buildings have been removed and the areas have been returned to parkland. To the north of the Great Conservatory, the 1960s Conference Centre has been removed and the area extensively re-landscaped, with Brown’s lake being restored to its original eighteenth century layout.

EXPLORE SYON HOUSE >

Restoration work on The Great Conservatory at Syon Park

Restoration work at Syon Park, workers in high vis inside the building