Orleans House the Octagon Room and Service Wing Adjoining is a Grade I listed building in the Richmond upon Thames local planning authority area, England. A Baroque House. 6 related planning applications.
Orleans House the Octagon Room and Service Wing Adjoining
- WRENN ID
- old-rampart-yew
- Grade
- I
- Local Planning Authority
- Richmond upon Thames
- Constituency
- Twickenham MP: Munira Wilson (LD)
- Country
- England
- Type
- House
- Period
- Baroque
- OS grid reference
- TQ 169 733
- Coordinates
- 51.44734, -0.31909
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Orleans House, specifically the Octagon Room and its adjoining service wing, is a Grade I listed building. It is all that remains of Orleans House, which was originally built in 1710 for James Johnston, who served as Queen Anne's Secretary of State for Scotland. The house was home to Louis Philippe from 1800 to 1814 and again from 1815 to 1817. In 1720, Johnston commissioned architect James Gibbs to add the Octagon Room for entertaining Queen Caroline, the wife of George II.
The structure is made of red brick with stone dressings and features rubbed brick pilasters at the corners. It has large round-arched windows with blocked surrounds and round windows above them. The interior showcases a fine Roman baroque style, with plaster figures on the pediments of the fireplace and doors, as well as busts in round niches above, created by artists G. Artan and J. Bagutti. The Octagon Room is illustrated in Gibbs' 'Book of Architecture', plate 71. The service wing is a long two-storey brick range that adjoins the Octagon to the west, featuring a door with a pediment and a rusticated surround. Additionally, there is a rebuilt two-storey wing to the north.
Local climate
Orleans House the Octagon Room and Service Wing Adjoining sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 720 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 83% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 78% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 32 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 59% of listed buildings. Of these, 14 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- Sale history — 2 transactions since 1995
- Related listed building consents — 6 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
this building 1 similar nearby listed buildings