Ranger's House

Where it sits. Ranger's House stands on Chesterfield Walk, a quiet road along the western edge of Blackheath, with its back directly onto the south-west corner of Greenwich Park. It is a medium-sized Georgian villa in red brick — unusual in itself, because most London houses of its rank were later stuccoed or rebuilt in stone — set behind railings with an open sweep of heath in front. From the front steps it is about fifteen minutes downhill through the park past the Royal Observatory to Greenwich town centre and the river.

The story behind it. The house was built around 1723 for Vice-Admiral Francis Hosier, who paid for it with prize money and died of yellow fever off Porto Bello in 1727, four years after moving in. In 1748 it was bought by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, statesman, wit and the author of the Letters to His Son, who used it as a retreat from London air he blamed for his health. Chesterfield added the bow-fronted gallery wing on the north-west in 1750 to hang his pictures and to catch the light, and the house was known as Chesterfield House for a century. From 1815 it served as the official residence of the Ranger of Greenwich Park, a crown appointment then held by Princess Sophia Matilda, and that role gave the building its present name. It later passed through use as a tea room, a school and council offices before English Heritage took it on. It is Grade I listed.

What is inside. Since 2002 the house has held the Wernher Collection, close to seven hundred objects assembled by Sir Julius Wernher, a German-born financier who made an enormous fortune in South African diamonds and became one of the richest men in Britain. The collection is deliberately eccentric by the standards of Edwardian taste: medieval and Renaissance ivories, Limoges enamels, Italian maiolica, Byzantine and Gothic metalwork, Renaissance jewels including a celebrated pendant, early Italian and Dutch paintings, and Sèvres porcelain. Wernher bought for craftsmanship and strangeness rather than for names, and the result is one of the least-visited great collections in London — you can often have a room to yourself on a weekday. The objects were originally displayed at Bath House in Piccadilly and at Luton Hoo in Bedfordshire, and the move to Greenwich in 2002 gave them a Georgian domestic setting closer in scale to the way they were first shown.

On screen. Ranger's House is the exterior of Bridgerton House, the London home of the Bridgerton family, and it recurs in every series: carriages pulling up, siblings coming and going down the front steps, the railings and the road in front dressed for Grosvenor Square. Two things about the screen version are worth knowing before you visit. First, the wisteria that swags across the front in the show is not real and never was — no wisteria has ever grown on the building, and the flowering mass was added by the production as set dressing and visual effects. Second, nothing inside the show's Bridgerton House is here: every interior, from the entrance hall and staircase to the drawing rooms and bedrooms, was filmed at Halton House in Buckinghamshire, and the two buildings are stitched together in the edit. Visitors who arrive expecting to walk from the front door into Violet Bridgerton's morning room are the staff's most common disappointment.

What you actually see today. A compact, restrained brick front of seven bays with a modest pedimented doorcase, the Chesterfield gallery projecting to one side, and a walled rose garden behind that belongs to Greenwich Park and is free to enter. The interiors are hung and cased as a collector's house rather than a period reconstruction. Opening is limited — typically weekends and selected days in the warmer months, sometimes by guided tour only — so check English Heritage's calendar before making a journey for the inside. The exterior, which is the part everyone actually comes for, can be seen from Chesterfield Walk at any hour and free of charge; the standard Bridgerton frame is taken from the pavement opposite, slightly to the left of centre.

Getting there and timing. Cutty Sark station on the DLR, or Greenwich and Blackheath on the rail network, are each fifteen to twenty-five minutes on foot; the walk up through Greenwich Park past the Observatory is the better approach and gives the view over the Old Royal Naval College and Canary Wharf on the way. Combine it with the Painted Hall, the Queen's House and the National Maritime Museum for a full day in the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. The ground floor is broadly level; upper floors involve stairs.