Chiswick's Most Expensive House Back on the Market


Walpole House being offered for sale for £18.5 million


A view over the garden at Walpole House. Picture: Savills

The house that holds the record for the highest price ever paid for a residential property in Chiswick is up for sale.

Walpole House is a Grade II listed property on Chiswick Mall with spectacular river views. It last changed hands in 2008 when it was sold for £12,500,000 by Jasper Conran, smashing the existing record for the W4 post code area.

The designer had only owned the property for a relatively short time having bought it for £7,250,000 two years previously. He undertook an intensive restoration project, with a focus on the old basement kitchen and the store rooms.

He was quoted as saying that he wanted to sell because it was taking him too long to get to work and for his dinner party guests to arrive.

The house is now available again and is being offered through Savills for £18,500,000.

Walpole House is believed to have been the inspiration for Miss Pinkerton's Seminary for Young Ladies in Vanity Fair. William Thackeray Makepeace was educated within the house during the time it was a boarding school.

It takes its name from the Hon Thomas Walpole (nephew of Sir Robert Walpole, England’s first Prime Minister) who lived there from 1798 till 1803. Its origins date back to the 15th century but the current facade was constructed in 1730 and it now is the largest property on the Mall with a substantial walled garden at the rear.

Walpole House seen from Chiswick Mall. Picture: Savills

It was the last home of Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland and Mistress of King Charles II and the Irish Politician Daniel O’Connell lived there.

John Isaac Thornycroft, Sculptor and Ship Builder (son of Thomas Thornycroft), who also once owned Walpole House, built Britain’s first steam powered, road-going commercial vehicle in the workshop at ‘Boadicea House’ within the gardens. In more recent years Conservation Architect Jeremy Benson, lived and worked from Walpole House.

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July 17, 2022