Ham House was built in 1610 for Sir Thomas Vavasour, Knight Marshal to James I. 

On Sir Thomas's death in 1620, the house passed briefly to the Earl of Holdernesse, before 
becoming the home of William Murray in 1626.

Murray had been the 'whipping boy' for the future Charles I. He took punishment on behalf 
of the young prince, and formed a close bond with him, growing up to share his taste in art 
and architecture. 

Between 1637 and 1639, Murray remodelled the interior of Ham. He created the Great Staircase
and a suite of sumptuous rooms on the first floor: the Great Dining Room (now the Hall 
Gallery), the North Drawing Room, and the Long Gallery with its adjoining picture closet. 

The decoration is intact in most of these rooms. The remaining part of Murray's art 
collection gives us a rare picture of fashions under Charles I.

When the Civil War broke out in 1642, Murray naturally joined the Royalist cause, and was 
created 1st Earl of Dysart for his loyalty. He died in Edinburgh in 1655.

The Duchess of Lauderdale
Ham passed to Murray’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth. Her father’s titles were conferred upon 
her in 1655, after his death, when she became the Countess of Dysart.

She was described by contemporaries as beautiful, ambitious and greedy. In 1648, she married
Sir Lionel Tollemache (sic), 3rd Baronet, of Helmingham Hall in Suffolk, a wealthy and cultivated 
squire. They had eleven children, of whom five survived to adulthood. 

Renowned as a political schemer, she is said to have belonged to the Sealed Knot, the secret
organisation supporting the exiled King. Even before Tollemache's (sic) death in 1669, Lady Dysart
was rumoured to have formed an attachment to the ambitious John Maitland, 1st Duke of 
Lauderdale, Secretary of State for Scotland. 

Following their marriage in 1672, they extended and refurnished Ham as a palatial villa 
reflecting the Duke's status as one of the most powerful ministers of Charles II. Much of 
this luxurious interior decoration survives today, along with rare textiles, furniture and 
paintings.

The Tollemache (sic) dynasty
After the Duke's death in 1682, the Duchess had to curb her extravagance and was eventually 
reduced to pawning her favourite pictures and jewellery. Elizabeth died at Ham in 1698. Ham 
House and the Dysart title then passed to her eldest son from her first marriage: Lionel 
Tollemache (sic), 3rd Earl of Dysart (1649-1727). 

Lionel took little interest in the house but by contrast, the 3rd Earl's grandson and heir, 
another Lionel, the 4th Earl, carried out major structural repairs in the 1740s. He filled 
many of the rooms with new furniture and paintings.

Most notably, the Queen's Bedchamber, furnished by the Lauderdales for Charles’ Queen, 
Catherine of Braganza, was converted into a first-floor drawing room. The mahogany chairs, 
gilt pier-glasses and tables, and tapestries after Watteau survive in situ.

The 5th Earl partially re-landscaped the garden and was succeeded in 1799 by his brother, 
Wilbraham, who immediately made improvements inside and outside the house. The 6th Earl was 
a generous patron of Reynolds and Gainsborough. He created the striking Yellow Satin 
Bedroom, but most of his changes were antiquarian in spirit, enhancing Ham's 17th-century 
character.

Restoration and renewal
Little changed at Ham between the 6th Earl's death in 1821 and 1884, when William, 9th Earl 
of Dysart came of age. Sixty years of benign neglect had left the house and its contents in 
urgent need of repair and Lord Dysart embarked on a thorough restoration campaign.

The roof was renewed, electricity and heating installed, and much of the 17th-century 
furniture repaired. The 9th Earl died in 1935, when Ham passed to his second cousin, Sir 
Lyonel Tollemache. 

Sir Lyonel and his son, Cecil, gave Ham to the National Trust in 1948.


AND...

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Ham House - Surrey, England
History Today,  Jan, 1995  by Robert Beddard

www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_m1373/is_n1_v45/ai_16425397
Ham House, situated on the River Thames, outside Richmond, in Surrey, is a house with a 
tale to tell. For three centuries it was the home of the Tollemache (sic) earls of Dysart, a title
in the Scottish peerage. Since 1948 the house has been in the safekeeping of the National 
Trust, which in co-operation with the Victoria and Albert Museum, the guardian of its 
contents, has restored it to its former splendour. Set in the midst of its level lawns and 
peaceful gardens, Ham House presents itself today as an oasis of calm surrounded by the 
noisy, westward sprawl of the metropolis. Yet, its present cosetted tranquility belies its 
bustling past, for it was once a hive of activity -- political, social and cultural.

The house holds a special fascination for students of Stuart politics and culture, for it 
is the courtier's house par excellence. Built by a courtier in the reign of James I, it 
remained a courtier's house well into the reign of his grandson, Charles II. Better than 
any other furnished mansion that has survived from the seventeenth century it conveys a 
sense of what life was like for those who were industrious and fortunate enough to work 
their way to the top of Stuart government and society. Moreover, it does this, not merely 
for one particular period of the seventeenth century, but repeatedly for the major part of 
it.

Unlike the Earl of Pembroke's Wilton House, near Salisbury, which speaks to us exclusiely 
of Charles I's reign, or Oliver St John's Thorpe Hall, in Northamptonshire, which relates 
completely to the Cromwellian interregnum, the building and decoration of Ham House span 
the eight decades from the 1610s to the 1680s. Through six occupants and three families 
Ham served as a home for a sequence of dedicated courtiers. Carved on the heavy front door 
is the builder's motto; it speaks eloquently for them all -- vivat rex, long live the king! 
To step through its portals is to enter the extraordinarily privileged, intensely 
hierarchical, and increasingly sophisticated world of the Stuart court, where the names, 
reputations, and fortunes of men and women rose and fell with astonishing, and at times 
bewildering, rapidity.

Despite the efforts made by an older generation of disapproving historians to lessen the 
political stature and abilities of the Stuart monarchs and their ministers, and to 
exaggerate the importance of Parliament and the judiciary in the public life of the nation 
state, the royal court is now seen for what it always was: the nerve-centre of government, 
the fount of honour, the source of patronage, and the acknowledged spring from which all 
temporal blessing flowed. Throughout the century it exercised a powerful magnet pull, 
attracting men of ambition, talent, and culture into its orbit from home and abroad. A 
great deal of the recurrent instability that afflicted Stuart government -- both before the 
Great Rebellion of 1642 and after the Restoration of 1660 -- arose from the fact that there 
were too many, not too few, able men competing for high office. All too often it was the 
fate of princes to find that, in dispensing office, they created one grateful courtier and 
disappointed innumerable others.

The key to official advancement in the age of personal monarchy lay in obtaining physical 
access to the person of the monarch. Without it the acquisition and retention of royal 
favour was virtually impossible. In the ruling class the ideal of service to king and 
kingdom was bolstered by enlightened self-interest. While for some finer spirits, the 
performance of one's duty to the crown was sufficient reward, for many it brought tangible 
rewards in the shape of wealth, titles and influence. Ham House is a standing monument to 
the successful pursuit of office. After the elapse of three hundred years, its unrivalled 
contents bear testimony to the massive material benefits that came from the attainment of 
high office under the Stuart kings.

Ham House began life as a comparatively modest building, which in the course of the century,
and with changes of ownership, was gradually transformed into the sumptuous mansion we see 
today. Its complicated evolution is made much easier to understand if, at the outset, we 
recall that it had three main stages in its domestic and architectural history. Each
chronological stage -- the 1610s, 1630s, and 1670s -- coincided with a particular occupant: 
a pointer, should one be necessary, to the supremely important role of the individual in 
history.

First, the original building was the work of Sir Thomas Vavasour, and reflects the 
preponderantly vernacular style of the early Jacobean period. Then came William Murray who 
embellished the interior in accordance with the taste of Charles I's court, in which 
Continental influences were to the fore. Finally, there was the substantial expansion of 
the house, and the completion of the state rooms, by the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale in 
the reign of the Francophile Charles II.

At each stage of its evolution Ham kept pace with the development of court culture, so that 
to study the fabric and furnishings of the house as a seventeenth-century document is to 
trace the transformation of royal and aristocratic ideas of polite living: a process which 
carried England further and further away from its roots in the Gothic, medieval past, and 
into the mainstream of European Renaissance culture. Ham House is, for all its apparent 
'Englishness', hugely indebted not only to its later Scottish owner-occupiers, but also to 
the impact of foreign ideas, artists and craftsmen.

The house was built in 1610 by Sir Thomas Vavasour, Knight Marshal to the recently 
installed Scottish James I and VI. He was the officer of the royal household charged with 
maintaining the good order and discipline of the court. He had judicial cognisance of any 
transgressions that occurred within the king's presence or verge of the court, a 
jurisdiction which extended over a twelve-mile radius from the royal palace. His official 
duties were such that he had always to be within call to take offenders into custody, and 
to make arrangements for their detention and diet during the king's pleasure. They included 
state prisoners, seminary priests, and idle Scots.

The scale on which Vavasour conceived the building of his new home reflected his middling 
position in the court hierarchy; just as the siting of it catered for the fundamental 
requirement of his post, which was constant attendance. The meadows bordering the Thames 
below Richmond Hill, then deep in the unspoilt Surrey countryside, afforded a suitable 
site for his residence. It was accessible to, and from, the already well-established string 
of palaces that lined the Thames, which in the seventeenth century constituted an important 
ceremonial route for the barges of the king and nobles, as well as a mainline for the 
transport of livestock, commodities and provisions of all sorts.

The very nature of Vavasour's official 'policing' duties tied him to attend the court 
wherever it happened to be. Whether he chose to travel overland or by water, he was within 
easy reach of the royal palaces of Richmond, Whitehall and St James's, downstream, and of 
Windsor, upstream. Ham provided him with a convenient dwelling in the developing, early 
commuter belt of the appropriately named Home Counties, that encircled the capital, and 
stretched from nearby Syon, the cashiered Brigintine nunnery that served the Percy earls of 
Northumberland as their southern home, to Hatfield House, the magnificent residence of 
Robert Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, in Hertforshire.

Solidly constructed of red brick with stone dressings, Vavasour's house corresponded to his 
ample, but modest, income and needs. Not for him the stupendous, largely stone-built, 
spendthrift prodigy house of the kind that Lord Treasurer Salisbury, the greatest of the 
'Jacobethan' courtiers, erected at Hatfield. The original appearance of Ham House, as 
recorded in the background of Alexander Marshall's portrait miniature of Catherine, 
Countess of Dysart, was that of a typical Jacobean mansion. It consisted of nine bays and 
three storeys, with a strong vertical emphasis to the North facade -- an emphasis which 
derived from the projecting wings and shallow frontispiece, the abundant fenestration, and 
the breaking-up of the roof line.

Although the elevation was symmetrical and well proportioned in the manner encouraged by a 
diffuse, but as yet inexact, appreciation of the principles of Renaissance architecture, it 
was innocent of the rigorous classicism of Palladio, which, with the return of Inigo Jones
from Italy, was so soon to burst on the Jacobean court. Only the presence of the loggias, 
or 'Cloisters', with round-headed arches, flanking the entrance, and the deployment of 
columns and architrave around the doorway, furnish a hint of the approach of genuine 
classicism, based on a scholarly understanding of the buildings of ancient Rome that had 
been worked out by the humanists of the Italian Renaissance.


...AND...

Ham House in the 1960s
 The Gardens of Ham House
Kitchen Garden Blooms Again at Ham
Four and Twenty Blackbirds 
The Dysarts at Ham House
Statues Return
Further information from the National Trust:
 

Kitchen Garden Blooms Again at Ham
Peter Clarke, Head Gardener at Ham House, describes the current restoration of the original 
17th Century kitchen garden. 

MAJOR restoration work is underway at Ham House in Richmond-upon-Thames to re-create the 
original kitchen garden in front of the orangery. National Trust staff are working from 
original seventeenth century plans to ensure authenticity and the project will carry 
forward the restoration of the gardens at Ham which began in 1975. 

Original Orangery
The orangery at Ham House is believed to date from around 1670s when the Lauderdales were 
making improvements to the house and garden. In style the Ham House orangery recalls Dutch 
classical architecture: the cross bar type windows with small diamond shaped panes have 
four lights, the upper ones are fixed and the two lower ones can be opened. If built later 
than the 1670s, it would probably have had tall sash windows. It was built in two distinct 
phases with a smaller building, the cottage being added later at the west end. 

Orangeries in the late 17th century were narrow buildings made up of one long open space 
heated by stoves. Unfortunately the orangery at Ham has not retained any of its original 
internal features although they were probably not very elaborate. From the high number of 
citrus trees recorded in the accounts we assume the building was used as a storage place 
for citrus plants to overwinter. 

The orangery at Ham overlooks the old walled kitchen garden, situated to the south west of 
the main house, to the right of the area known as `the plats". (Next to this garden is an 
area with a Victorian greenhouse attached to the walls of the nearby stables.) The history 
of the walled garden can be traced back to 1653 when it is mentioned in an inventory 
attached to lease for the garden. In recent years the beds around the walIs of the garden 
have been used to grow roses and the garden had become known as the Rose Garden. 

There are several plans for the original gardens at Ham: Slezer and Wyck (1671), the 
Helmingharn plan (c1730) and a plan published in the Vitruvius Britannicus in 1739. 

The Siezer plan shows two buildings to the north of the.garden, although not exactly on the 
site of the present Orangery. 

The garden itself is divided into eight blocks by either paths or hedges. Each block is 
further subdivided into four smaller ones and surrounded by a thin line with dots in the 
corner of the blocks, thought to indicate planting. 

The Helmingharn plan shows a similar shape without subdivisions and a rectangular shape 
cutting the two beds to the west of the garden. 

The Vitruvius Britannicus plan shows cultivated strips or planting beds within each 
rectangle and a building similar to the existing orangery. 

Slezer Plan Assures Continuity
The layout of the restored kitchen garden has been based on the Slezer and Wyck plan to 
give continuity to the original restoration carried out in 1975. The new garden has been 
divided into 16 compartments with gravel paths between them, rather than the 32 shown on 
the plan. 

There have had to be some compromises over the use of the area as for many years it has 
been used for marquee receptions; this will continue at the lower end of the garden. The 
orangery is now used as a restaurant and the terrace has been extended for visitors to 
enjoy their tea. We only plan to cultivate 8 plots for the foreseeable future. 

The garden will be run on organic principles and it is intended to use the oldest varieties 
available and to build up a collection of heritage vegetables. The vegetables and flowers 
grown will be used in the restaurant and house. 

Plant Lists
There are four detailed historic lists of plants in the garden at Ham: 

A schedule and inventory of fruit trees and other trees made on 10th September 1653 which 
lists 'Standings groweing and reneweinge in the gardens wilderness and grounds demised by 
the indenture of lease to which the schedule is annexed unto Samuell Purnell gardiner by 
Sir Lyonell Tolemache (sic) and John Peirson"
This schedule records the west side of the wall in the kitchen garden with "2 vynes, 9 
peaches, 6 peares and 10 peares where the wall has fallen downe, 1 cherry tree, 16 
apricocke trees"; the orchard in the kitchen garden with "in the first Rowe of trees next 
to the walke 12 apple trees and one cherrie" (the list continues to seven rows); and the 
nursery with "89 stockes of peares, cherries and apples redied grafted. 16 rodd of 
Hatihoakes redie planted, 16 rodd of sparrowgrass planted". 
Part of the inventory of the Duke's goods after his death, drawn up between 25th October 
and 12th December 1682, which lists '”8 large orange trees and lemon trees, 22 smaller 
orange and lemon trees in tubs 32 orange and lemon trees in potts (and) 11 great tubs with 
myrtles and several pots with greens" 
Lists from 1682 of trees and plants for the garden and 
from 1693 lists of 11 ye trees and plants, flowers and potts such were delivered to John 
Balesson Your Grace's gardener about middle of June 1693". 
Further research needs to be carried out on cultivation methods for a kitchen garden of 
the late 17th century. 

Four and Twenty Blackbirds 
HMJ writes… 

IN the seventeenth century meat and game of all kinds were the central component of the 
dining table and tastes were more catholic than today: even songbirds like larks might turn 
up baked in a pie. Salt and pepper were expensive and in short supply, so dishes were 
seasoned with mustard, cloves and mace and garnished with lemons and capers. 

Vegetables formed a less significant part of the diet than today and the diarist Samuel 
Pepys rarely mentions them despite listing his meals in detail. However Pepys lived in 
central London with less access to fresh food than country dwellers. 

Most common English varieties of vegetable were grown: cabbage, leeks, onions, cauliflower, 
spinach, endive, carrots, turnips, parsnips, beetroot, artichokes, mushrooms, peas and 
beans. Potatoes were still relatively new. Salad vegetables included lettuce, celery, 
cucumber and radishes. 

Plants and herbs were also grown for their medicinal properties. Globe artichokes for 
example were believed to protect the liver and lower blood fat levels, while sage was 
thought to aid digestion - probably essential for diets so high in fatty meat and low in 
roughage. 

Fruit was very popular including apples, pears, quinces, melons, strawberries, cherries and 
soft fruit like gooseberries and apricots. In 1664 the northern end of Hyde Park was fenced 
off to create an apple orchard for the Royal Household. Citrus fruit was grown by the 
wealthy in purpose built "orangeries" which were heated in the winter. 

Scented flowers and shrubs were popular including rosemary, lavender, gillyflowers, musk 
roses, lilies, violets, honeysuckle, cornflowers, cherry and apple blossom and columbine. 
There was also a mania for tulips in the 1660s. 
myweb.tiscali.co.uk/london.gardens/features/ham.htm
The Dysarts at Ham House
HMJ writes… 

HAM House, sited on the banks of the Thames at Richmond, is one of the best ­preserved 
seventeenth century houses in England. 

Originally built in 1610, it was remodelled in the 1630s by William Murray, former 
"whipping boy" to Charles 1. Shortly after Civil War broke out in 1642 Murray was created 
Earl of Dysart and spent much of the war away on missions for the King leaving his family 
at home at Ham House. 

In 1648 Murray's eldest daughter and heiress, the red-haired, sharp-witted Elizabeth, 
married Sir Lionel Tollemache (sic) of Helminghall Hall in Suffolk. 

Despite having eleven children in the next twenty years, Elizabeth still found time to be a 
leading member of the Society of the Sealed Knot (dedicated to the restoration of the 
monarchy) and during the Protectorate was rumoured to be on intimate terms with the 
Protector himself Oliver Cromwell. 

Elizabeth inherited the Ham estate in 1655 and after the Restoration became a prominent 
member of Charles ll's court. In 1669 her husband died and in 1670 the King conferred her 
father's titles on her making her Countess of Dysart in her own right. 

In 1671, at the age of 46, the Countess took a new husband John Maitland, Earl (later Duke) 
of Lauderdale, a leading member of the notorious CABAL government. He was a former Scottish 
Covenanter who had changed sides in the Civil War. 

Arrogant, flamboyant, unscrupulous and extravagant the high profile couple set about 
refurbishing Ham House and its grounds into a showplace in keeping with their social status 
and political ambitions. It is this turbulent period in its history that the appearance of 
the house and grounds largely reflect today 

The 9th Earl of Dysart died in 1935 and Ham House passed to a second cousin, Sir Lionel 
Tollemache (sic), who, with his son Cecil, gave the house to the National Trust in 1948. In 1975,
1he NT undertook a major restoration of the gardens, based on contemporary plans. 

Statues Return
PC writes… 

BEYOND the lawns.to the rear of Ham House is an area known as the Wilderness. 

Danckert's painting in the white closet at Ham House shows classical statues in the centre 
of the Wilderness and the inventory of 1679 records: “Tenn Statues of lead whereof two upon 
stone pedestalls". 

These ten statues are clearly those painted by Danckerts on his visits to Ham in 1675. The 
National Trust has successfully applied for funding to replace four statues and a further 
six bases. 

The two statues at the Wilderness entrance were Venus Marina and Mercury. No life size 
versions of Venus are known to exist so the Trust has kindly been given permission by the 
Queen to take a cast from Hampton Court. Mercury will be cast from the owner's statue. 
   

National Trust | Ham House
Built in 1610 Ham House is unique in Europe as the most complete survival of
17th-century fashion and power.
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/scripts/ nthandbook.dll?ACTION=PROPERTY&PropertyId=234 - 34k - 28 Sep 2005 - Cached - Similar pages 

Historic properties & collections - Conservation | The National Trust
Part of Ham House was used, and part of the garden was adapted to represent a
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www.nationaltrust.org.uk/historicproperties/ index.cfm?fuseaction=property&property_id=57 - 15k - Cached - Similar pages 

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Fuzzy photos of Ham House and garden, suburban London.
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Ham House Investigation Mar 04
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