Just off the road between Hampstead and Highgate, perching resplendently on a ridge that offers a commanding view over inner London’s rooftops and skyscrapers, the Blue Badge Tourist Guide and his or her clients will find one of London’s ‘hidden gems’: Kenwood House.

Kenwood House in London. Photo Credit: © Mark King.

Why Visit Kenwood?

Perhaps you are not so familiar with this suburban treasure? Let me tempt you with a few reasons to visit and, to bring your clients. Not least, visiting the house is free of charge!

Architecture

Kenwood is a fine example of the craft of the Adam Brothers’ team of plasterers, painters, carvers and carpenters who enhanced the house in the 1760s and 70s. The Adams would design everything for their clients, from architectural plan to harmonious detail on the door knobs: ‘soup to nuts’, as American visitors say. A late-eighteenth-century villa that delivered an out-of-town residence for William Murray, first Earl of Mansfield, the eminent Lord Chief Justice, and his Countess, Lady Betty, while elegantly showcasing neoclassical taste and creativity promoted by Robert Adam.

At its heart is the Great Room or library-cum-social space regarded as one of the finest spaces in London designed by the Adam company. While Robert Adam’s thumbprint is in the main house, we should not forget the later additions by lesser-known Georgian architects, such as George Saunders, working for David, the second Earl, a diplomat and Secretary of State for the Northern Department.

Adams interior at the Kenwood House in London. Photo Credit: © Mark King.

Paintings

Nearly a century ago, Edward Cecil Guinness, First Earl of Iveagh and successful scion of the Irish brewing dynasty, rescued Kenwood from the threat of suburban redevelopment. Iveagh bequeathed sixty-three paintings of the finest quality to the nation and had the house remodelled as an art gallery with the intent that it should be ‘preserved as a fine example of the artistic home of a gentleman of the eighteenth century’. To this day, it remains free to visit thanks to his generosity, although these days operational costs and conservation rely heavily on income streams such as donations, sales of guidebooks, catering, retail products (including a successful second-hand bookshop) and English Heritage memberships.

The Iveagh Bequest includes notable works by Dutch and Flemish Old Masters and leading names from the British schools: Rembrandt van Rijn, Hals, Vermeer, Cuyp, Snyders, Bol, de Jongh and the van de Veldes, through van Dyck and Larkin to Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner, Lawrence, Romney, Constable, and Hoppner. Other decorative delights include works by Angelica Kauffmann, Sargent, Boucher, Landseer, Crome, Ibbetson, Zucchi, Cosway, Tompion, Merlin and Wedgwood.

Having world-class art collections enables a dynamic policy of temporary loans, so do always check the Kenwood website before you visit.

Great Room at the Kenwood House in London. Photo Credit: © Mark King.

One of Kenwood’s treasures is Frans Hals’ much-loved portrait of Pieter van den Broecke, which has been loaned to the Wallace Collection and Rijksmuseum – very much in character as Mijnheer (Mr) van den Broecke was a captain in the Dutch VOC (East India Company). In its place we enjoyed a fine painting by Hals’ student Judith Leyster, whose individual reputation is being rediscovered today.

Another famous painting many visitors come to see is George Romney’s The Spinstress which depicts a chaste-looking Emma Hart – later Lady Hamilton, wife of Sir William, ambassador in Italy, and future paramour of Horatio, Lord Nelson. A fascinating woman whose beauty, talents and personality became legendary. Check out her (ahem!) ‘interesting’ life working at Dr Graham’s Temple of Health with its Great Celestial Bed, abusive behaviour at the hands of exploitative lovers, her theatrical ‘Attitudes’ (tableaux vivants), mutually convenient marriage to the elderly ambassador, and liaison with the nation’s beloved military hero. This is the finest of three paintings of Emma at Kenwood, with so many stories to be conjured from them!

Hamilton Mansfield at Kenwood House in London. Photo Credit: © Mark King.

The Strike A Pose exhibition, which ended in November 2024, comprised recent paintings by Stephen Farthing RA inspired directly by the ‘swagger portraits’ of the Suffolk Collection on display on the upper floor at Kenwood. This playful, insightful dialogue between ‘swagger’ paintings by Larkin (early seventeenth century) and Sargent (late nineteenth), and Farthing’s modern riffs on their theatricality made for a fresh take on historical portraiture.

Autumn Colours

Ever-changing colour of the leaves on the trees around the estate and beyond on Hampstead Heath are worth a visit. The liquidambar tree with its five coloured leaves is a particular favourite. Make time for a re-energising walk through the estate’s many paths and trails, and if the sheer healthfulness is not quite enough for your conscience, convince yourself instead that you are researching the surviving elements of Humphry Repton’s late eighteenth-century landscape design. Or even checking out the sculpture by Henry Moore or Barbara Hepworth. There is joy and delight to be had too from other fauna and flora. For instance, a colony of ring-necked parakeets with their brilliant lime-green plumage, Egyptian ducks on the pond, rooks and magpies, bats in the dark, creepy-crawlies in the decomposing bark, and autumn flowers in bloom in the kitchen garden.

Kenwood tree. Photo Credit: © Mark King.

Residents

Let’s start with the First Earl and Countess of Mansfield. Born in Scone Palace, his family’s ancestral seat, William Murray (1705-93) was made an earl in 1776. He was chief justice of the King’s Bench of Great Britain from 1756 to 1788 and made important contributions to commercial law. Mansfield has a marble memorial in Westminster Abbey’s north transept. His wife Elizabeth ‘Lady Betty’ Finch (1703-84) was the daughter of the second Earl of Nottingham. The couple married in 1738 and although childless, raised several members of their extended family at Kenwood. Lady Elizabeth Murray was the daughter of the future second Earl whose mother had died tragically young.

Perhaps more notably for what it says about Mansfield’s progressive values, Dido Elizabeth Belle was the mixed race, illegitimate daughter of Sir John Lindsay, a Royal Navy commander serving in the Caribbean. A copy of the girls’ beautiful double portrait by David Martin is at Kenwood. (The original is at Scone Place.) There is also a striking portrait by Mikeìla Henry-Lowe imagining Dido. This was commissioned as one of a series of paintings of members of the African diaspora connected with English Heritage.  Dido’s story was told in the 2013 film Belle, although this portrayal of her position at Kenwood has been called into question.

Elizabeth Belle portrait by Mikéla Henry-Lowe at Kenwood House. Photo Credit: © Mark King.

Exiled Russian lovers Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich and his wife Sophie, Countess de Torby rented the estate between 1910 and 1917. Their daughter Anastasia married ‘Randlord’ Sir Harold Wernher and Nadezhda married a Mountbatten great-grandson of Queen Victoria and thus became Marchioness of Milford Haven.

Kenwood’s final resident also had an interesting trajectory. Nonnie May Stewart (1878-1923) was born in Ohio. Her second husband, businessman William Leeds, was known as America’s ‘Tin King’. After his death, she travelled in Europe with their young son, becoming one of jeweller Cartier’s most valued clients. Overcoming objections from her third husband’s family, eventually Nonnie marries the youngest son of the King of Greece and is styled HRH Princess Anastasia of Greece and Denmark.

So, do consider Kenwood House as one of London’s loveliest spaces.