Roehampton House

Roehampton House is a Grade I listed house at Roehampton Lane, Roehampton, London. What is now the central block of the current building was built between 1710 and 1712 by the architect Thomas Archer and named Roehampton House. It was built on behalf of the merchant Thomas Cary. Cary's father, John, had emigrated to the Colony of Virginia in 1663, and Cary was born there in 1669; both returned to London and by 1690 were running an import and export trading business. Internal features included the surviving 'great staircase' and a two-storey 'painted salon' on the first floor above the entrance hall, decorated with paintings on the walls and ceiling by Sir James Thornhill. On the ground floor, behind the entrance hall, the dining room (with a monumental chimneypiece, reputedly by Grinling Gibbons) extended to the rear (or 'garden front') of the house; it was flanked by a drawing room on one side and a boudoir on the other. Cary's widow later sold the house to the Earl of Albemarle. In 1771 it was bought by one John Wilkinson, a ship-owner; then his widow sold it in 1791 to William Drake M.P.. The house continued to change hands, and was also rented out to a number of different people, during the first part of the nineteenth century. In 1841 it became the London seat of the Earls of Leven and Melville; the widow of the 9th Earl lived there until her death in 1887. In the early 20th century the property was bought by Arthur Grenfell, a Canadian financier. From 1910 to 1913, he engaged Sir Edwin Lutyens to make some alterations to the main house and added north and south wings. Historic England notes that these were "a continuation of the Archer style and to a plan close to Archer's original intentions", and that "the Lutyens parts would in themselves merit Grade II*". The estate was again sold in January 1915, to Kenneth Wilson of the Wilson shipping family; but shortly afterwards the house was requisitioned by the War Office for troop accommodation. Later that year,…