Pitzhanger Manor

Pitzhanger Manor is an English country house famous as the home of neoclassical architect, Sir John Soane. Built between 1800 and 1804 in what is now Walpole Park Ealing, to the west of London, the Regency Manor is a rare and spectacular example of a building designed, built and lived in by Sir John Soane himself. Soane intended it as a domestic space to entertain guests in, as well as a family home for a dynasty of architects, starting with his sons.

Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery was established as a heritage attraction in 1987, later showing contemporary art exhibitions from 1996. In 2015, the Pitzhanger closed for a major conservation project to restore the Grade I listed building to Soane’s original designs, and upgrade the contemporary Gallery. The three-year project was led by Ealing Council, in collaboration with Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery Trust and with the aid of the National Lottery Heritage Fund. On 16 March 2019 Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery re-opened, revealing Soane’s original design for the first time in over 175 years.

A large house has stood on the site at least since the late seventeenth century, at which time the smaller Pitzhanger Manor (variously spelled) stood a mile or so to its north.

Between 1664 and 1674, a Richard Slaney paid Hearth Tax on a building on the site of the present-day Pitzhanger Manor for 16 hearths. This account provides a rough indication of the considerable size of the property.

In 1711, the building's occupants John and Mary Wilmer gave away their eldest daughter Grizell Wilmer (1692–1756) to be married to Johnathan Gurnell (1684–1753). (Samuel Hoare Jr was a grandson of this union.) He went on to make his fortune, first as a merchant and later as a co-founder of the city bank Gurnell, Hoare, and Harman. It was through this marriage that the house then passed to his only surviving son Thomas Gurnell, who bought Pits Hanger Manor Farm (sometimes spelt Pitts Hanger on old maps) in 1765. With the plainer 'manor house' of Pits Hanger (Farm) Manor standing near the centre of the modern Meadvale Road in the present suburb of Pitshanger (often referred to locally as Pitshanger Village), his grander existing house, a mile to the south in Ealing, became known as Pitshanger Place.

In 1768, George Dance the Younger was commissioned to build an extension, on which a young John Soane, later to become one of Britain’s most influential architects, had one of his first architectural apprenticeships.

Upon the death of Thomas Gurnell, his son Johnathan II inherited the house. On his death in 1791, ownership passed to his young daughter (but was held in trust). The house was let out until 1799 when the trustees decided to sell it.

By the 1790s, John Soane had a successful architectural practice in London, holding the post of architect to the Bank of England. In 1794 Soane, his wife Eliza and their two young sons moved into 12 Lincoln's Inn Fields (now part of the Sir John Soane's Museum) in central London, which doubled as an architecture office for him and his staff.