Gunnersbury Park Museum

Gunnersbury Park House, now Gunnersbury Park Museum

Country house built between 1801 and 1828 by and for Alexander Copland, then remodelled in 1836 by Sydney Smirke for Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the City financier and Frankfurt-born founder of the British branch of the renowned international Jewish banking dynasty. The house opened as a museum in 1929.

The building is constructed of stucco over brick with slate roofs and stuccoed brick chimney stacks. It is designed in the Italianate style and comprises three storeys with a service area to the right of the main body. The house is planned around a central entrance hall and rear ante-room.

The main front elevation is symmetrical, featuring a seven-window range with 2:3:2 fenestration. The slightly projecting outer bays have rusticated quoins, a heavy moulded string course marks the second storey, and a moulded cornice runs along the parapet. The entrance is marked by paired Tuscan columns in antis supporting a porte-cochere, with Tuscan pilasters flanking a panelled door and windows to either side. The ground-floor windows are eight-pane sashes set in raised architraves with floating cornices. The first-floor windows are semi-circular arched eight-pane sashes with moulded architraves continued as moulded impost courses. The second-floor windows are six-pane square-headed sashes.

The left-hand side elevation features a mid-19th-century semi-circular bay window on the front and a two-storey semi-circular bay to the rear. The rear garden elevation has a similar arrangement: a central three-storey, five-window range is flanked by projecting two-storey, three-window blocks. A central second-floor string course continues as cornices beneath the parapets of the outer blocks. The ground-floor French windows of the central range are recessed behind a screen of Tuscan columns and entablature. The quoined outer blocks have two-light French windows to both first and ground floors set in slightly projecting bays, with channelled rustication to the first floor and Tuscan columns to the ground floor.

The service range to the right comprises two to three storeys and features six to twelve-paned horned sashes. A doorway framed by Tuscan pilasters and entablature stands to the right of the still room, now a porch, which dates from 1905. A mid-18th-century semi-circular arched archway stands to the right, built of rusticated flint with Portland stone imposts, keystone and coping surmounted by ball finials. The garden elevation to the rear is single-storey, with a central concave recess and semi-circular arched niches with moulded parapets.

Interior

Smirke's interior spaces form a fine suite of rooms, the majority executed in 18th-century French style with panelled doors set in raised architraves with bracketed cornices and shutters.

The entrance hall contains an open-well staircase with a foliate wrought-iron balustrade, a garlanded quilloche frieze beneath a moulded enriched cornice, and a foliate ceiling boss.

The former parlour to the left has a marble fireplace and moulded cornice, with an anthemion cornice in the anteroom to the rear.

The former library to the right features a marble fireplace with claw feet to paired reeded columns.

The former vestibule to the rear of the entrance hall has narrow end bays defined by fluted pilasters to segmental arches, framing a domed ceiling adorned with stars and bay-leaf laurels in the spandrels.

The former music room to the rear left is notable for its eagle-brackets supporting the tympanum of a semi-circular arch, above which the Rothschild arms surmount the doorway. Bracketed foliate cornices frame two doorways flanking a festooned marble fireplace with putti and angled console brackets. The ceiling features fine plasterwork with naturalistic fruit and foliage details to the ribs dividing the panels.

The former drawing room to the right of the ante-room has Ionic scagliola columns separating narrow end bays. The fireplace and tall overmantle mirror are framed by scagliola columns with a gilt bay-leaf pulvinated frieze and a stele-type swan-necked pediment with antefixae. A coved cornice frames the star-spangled ceiling, which bears an oval painting of The Four Seasons by Edmond Thomas Parris.

The former dining room to the far right has bolection-panelled walls with antheniae to the concave corners. A cartouche flanked by palm fronds is set in the tympanum of a pedimented doorway. The fireplace is set in a recessed bay framed by scagliola columns with gilt Corinthian capitals. A foliate quilloche frieze adorns the elaborate plasterwork ceiling, which displays naturalistic fruit and foliage details to the ribs dividing the panels and antheniae to the central boss.

The first floor features moulded cornicing and marble fireplaces throughout, with a foliate wrought-iron balustrade to an oval balcony over the corridor to the right.

The service area to the right includes a former butler's pantry with original mid-19th-century cupboards and fittings, two staircases with wood and iron balustrades and panelled doors, and a kitchen fitted with a cast-iron range dating from circa 1840, complete with trivets, smoke jack, boiler and oven. An adjoining early cast-iron gas range by Timpson of Ealing, dating from circa 1850, stands nearby. The adjoining scullery was converted into a kitchen in the mid-19th century and contains a plainer cast-iron range.

Smirke's interiors at Gunnersbury Park House represent the earliest example of French-inspired interiors characteristic of the Rothschild family's later 19th-century houses.