Kenwood House

Where it sits. Kenwood House stands on the northern edge of Hampstead Heath, set back to the south of Hampstead Lane in the London Borough of Camden, just inside the boundary with Haringey. The ground falls away from the south front in a long sweep of lawn to a lake, with the wooded heath beyond and, on a clear day, the towers of the City visible over the trees. Two drives lead up from Hampstead Lane, each with a gated white-brick lodge. The house is free to enter and managed by English Heritage; the estate around it is public parkland. Highgate and Archway are the nearest Underground stations, both a walk of twenty to thirty minutes, and buses run along Hampstead Lane past the gates.

The story behind it. A house called Caen Wood was probably built here around 1616 by John Bill, the King's Printer. William Bridges, Surveyor-General of the Ordnance, bought it in 1694, demolished and rebuilt it — the original brick shell survives beneath the later facade — and added the orangery around 1700. In 1754 the property was bought by William Murray, later 1st Earl of Mansfield and Lord Chief Justice, and it is his commission that made the building famous. In 1764 Mansfield engaged Robert Adam and gave him a free hand. Adam added the library to balance the orangery and designed the Ionic portico at the entrance; the library, with its barrel vault, mirrored recesses and delicate plaster decoration, is one of the defining interiors of British neoclassicism. In June 1780 the Gordon Riots reached Kenwood after the mob had wrecked Mansfield's Bloomsbury townhouse. Free ale was handed out at the Spaniards Inn, topped up with wine from the house by Mansfield's steward, to stall the rioters until light cavalry arrived — a piece of improvised crowd control that saved the building.

How it became public. Later Mansfields extended the house — George Saunders added two wings on the north side, including the first permanent dining room — and the Hampstead–Highgate road was moved north between 1793 and 1796 so it no longer ran past the door. The family increasingly preferred Scone Palace in Scotland. The 6th Earl inherited in 1906 and let the place: to the exiled Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia from 1910 to 1917, then to the American heiress Nancy Leeds. The contents were sold in 1922 and the estate looked likely to be broken up for building. Part of the grounds was rescued by the Kenwood Preservation Council and opened to the public by George V in 1925. Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, bought the house and the remaining 74 acres in 1925 and left it to the nation on his death in 1927, together with his paintings — which is why it is also known as the Iveagh Bequest. English Heritage has run it since 1986.

On screen. Kenwood's south front and lakeside lawn have been used repeatedly as instant 18th-century England. The grounds and the lake appeared in the final episode of the television series Widows in 1985, and the house was named as the place where Harry Rawlins proposed to Dolly. Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995) filmed here. Most famously for film-location visitors, Notting Hill (1999) shot a scene in the grounds: this is where William, on a borrowed press pass, wanders onto the set of the period film Anna Scott is making, is handed headphones by a crew member and hears her describe him dismissively to her co-star. The production had already spent six weeks in west London before moving to locations including the Ritz, the Savoy, the Nobu restaurant and the Zen garden of the Hempel Hotel; Kenwood was the "film within the film". The lawn, the lake and the white stucco of the south front are all clearly identifiable in the finished sequence.

What you actually see today. The picture collection is the reason to go inside, and it is remarkable for a free entry: Rembrandt's late self-portrait, Vermeer's The Guitar Player, works by Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Reynolds and Turner, hung in domestic rooms rather than gallery halls. The Adam library alone justifies the walk up the hill. Outside, the designed landscape is attributed in part to Humphry Repton and is Grade II* on the register of historic parks; a later garden by Arabella Lennox-Boyd sits near the house. Sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Eugène Dodeigne stand in the grounds. A third of the estate is a Site of Special Scientific Interest — ancient woodland that holds the largest pipistrelle bat roost in London. The former brewery and kitchen buildings now house the café.

Getting there and timing. The classic approach is on foot across Hampstead Heath from Parliament Hill or Hampstead village, about twenty-five minutes uphill, which puts the house in its landscape rather than delivering you to a car park. Spring brings rhododendrons along the lake walk; woodland colour peaks in late October. Lakeside concerts ran here every summer from 1951 until 2006 and were later relocated within the estate after objections from neighbours. The ground floor is level and largely accessible, but the estate paths are grassy and sloping and the walk from the nearest station is steep.