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| The King's Observatory |
Tickets for the
King's Observatory in Old Deer Park, Richmond, come up once a year for about eight weeks. I found this out by accident. I knew it was now a private house and thought I'd never get to see inside it. So, when I saw the opening appear on a blog I follow, I checked it out. Tickets were going like hot cakes, but I was able to secure some.
I'd been enthralled by the Netflix drama, Queen Charlotte, which features the Observatory (though the drama wasn't filmed there) and this coincided. My interest had also been piqued from seeing the house from the Thames Path and coming across one of the obelisks in the park.
The observatory was built by architect, Sir William Chambers, for King George III who already had a Richmond Lodge as a country retreat. The King had a keen interest in astronomy. His particular interest was the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun, due to happen in 1769. In the grounds it is possible to still see two obelisks marking the meridian line in which the King kept time. Nowadays, the meridian line is at Greenwich Observatory, but this is where it all started.
To get to the Observatory, one has to walk along part made-up road through the middle of a golf course. It's a fair walk from Richmond Station, but if you are driving, there is a car park. There are two tours a day in the afternoons. This is a family house and they use rooms on the lower floor, and bedrooms on the upper floor. When there are no visitors they also use room that was once King George's workshop, now a lounge.
We arrived on a really hot day this week (London is experiencing a September heatwave). We were given overshoes to protect the floors and started our tour in the main visitors entrance where our guide gave us the history of the observatory and about talked about what the present owner has done to keep the house as close as possible to how it was. King George's mathematical instruments were once displayed in the visitors' entrance hall where now Chinese figures can be seen. These are the collection of the present owner.
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| The lounge (former workshop and school room of King George III) |
Our first room was the King's former workshop (now lounge), which was also used as a school room to educate his children. Through the next door we entered a library. Wow, this was my room! Next, we went out into a hallway and up the stairs to the dining room. Here we were allowed to sit at the table if we wished. The wallpaper is based on the 1772 painting commissioned by Alexander Hume, a sea captain. The hand painted wallpaper consists of 29 silk panels painted in the Wuxi, China workshops of Fromental Limited, and took 5,000 hours to complete between 2017 and 2018. We were given a booklet describing the scenes depicted on the walls. This guide can be viewed on the website. On a future tour of the house, a guide met one of the men who hung the wallpaper. He'd come back to have a look. Turned out he lives in the same town as me! On one wall is the modern version of a dumbwaiter!
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| The library |
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| The dining room with hand painted silk wallpaper |
Upstairs is another gallery consisting of plates from the Royal Pavilion at Brighton and a Chinese Screen.
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| Upstairs gallery |
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| Looking down into the visitors hall |
The last flight of stairs takes you to the Observatory itself. The telescope isn't the original, but is the same model. We were shown how the roof opens and candles would have been dotted around the wall (only a couple remain). Then we stepped out onto the roof for grand views over the gardens and beyond. From one point, it is possible to see the top of The Pagoda in Kew Gardens. It was boiling hot on the roof, but worth a walk around for the views.
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| The telescope |
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| View through the window |
That was the end of our tour. The house has a good atmosphere. I could quite easily live there! I love the fact that it's lived in and kept so well. There is talk of opening the house again in March, as the tours are so popular. There are lovely photos of the rooms on the website, as well as much more history.
NB: There will be no blog post on Monday 11th or Monday 18th as I am on holiday. However, I hope to post to the blog a few days after I return.
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