The Tower House, 29 Melbury Road, is a late-Victorian townhouse in the Holland Park district of Kensington and Chelsea, London. Designed between 1875 and 1881, in the French Gothic Revival style, it was described by the architectural historian J. Mordaunt Crook as ‘the most complete example of a medieval secular interior produced by the Gothic Revival’
About The Tower House in brief
The Tower House, 29 Melbury Road, is a late-Victorian townhouse in the Holland Park district of Kensington and Chelsea, London. Designed between 1875 and 1881, in the French Gothic Revival style, it was described by the architectural historian J. Mordaunt Crook as \”the most complete example of a medieval secular interior produced by the Gothic Revival, and the last\”. The house is built of red brick, with Bath stone dressings and green roof slates from Cumbria, and has a distinctive cylindrical tower and conical roof. Its exterior and the interior echo elements of Burges’s earlier work, particularly the McConnochie House in Cardiff and Castell Coch. It was designated a Grade I listed building in 1949. The house retains most of its internal structural decoration, but much of the furniture, fittings and contents that Burges designed has been dispersed. Many items, including the Great Bookcase, the Zodiac settle, the Golden Bed and the Red Bed, are now in institutions such as The Higgins Art Gallery & Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, while others are in private collections. In 1863, William Burges gained his first major architectural commission, Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork, at the age of 35. By 1875, his short career was largely over. Although he worked to finalise earlier projects, he received no further major commissions and the design, construction, decoration and furnishing of the Tower House occupied much of his last six years of his life.
Burges died in 1881 and the house was inherited by his brother-in-law, Richard Popplewell Pullan. In 1933, the poet John Betjeman inherited the remaining lease in 1962 but did not extend it. It stands opposite Stavordvale Lodge and next to Woodland House, built for the artist Luke Fildes, next to Little Holland House. The development of Melbury road in the grounds ofLittle Holland House created an art colony in Holland Park. Its most prominent member, Frederic, Lord Leighton, lived at Leighton House, 12 Holland Park Road, and at the time of Leighton’s death in 1896 six Royal Academicians, as well as one associate member, were living in Holland park Road and Melbury roads. The Tower House is on a corner of Melburys Road, just north of. Kensington High Street, in. Holland Park, the district of Holland Park and Kensington, London, and is now home to the Higgins Art gallery and The Victoria and. Albert Museum. It is also home to The Royal College of Art, which holds a collection of works of art by the likes of Sir Christopher Wren and Sir John Soames, and The Royal Institute of Painters and Sculptors, among others. It has been described as ‘the most beautiful house in the world’ and is one of the most beautiful houses in London, with views of the River Thames, the Lake District and the South Bank.
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This page is based on the article The Tower House published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
