John Soane was probably the most innovative British architect of his generation. A visit to his home and office — Nos 12, 13 and 14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, now the Sir John Soane Museum — is an assault on the senses (in the best way) and proof of his genius. From the ingenious picture room, whose hinged walls reveal hidden paintings, to the Sepulchre Chamber of Pharaoh Seti I and the Monument Court crowded with ancient sculptures and casts, the whole building is part cabinet of curiosities, part life-sized lesson in architecture and part magician’s sleight of hand.
But this was not his only home. In 1800, eight years after buying his London house, Soane acquired Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing. Already successful, he wanted a country retreat where he could develop his ideas and create a legacy with his sons.
He knew the site well: aged just 15 he had worked there under his mentor, the architect George Dance the Younger, who added a graceful Palladian south wing in the 1760s. Soane paid £4,500 for the manor and 28 acres of parkland and then proceeded to knock the old house down, respectfully leaving the extension of his mentor. Next, he built a country house that captured many of his new ideas, creating, by his own admission, a “sort of portrait” in brick, plaster, stone… and light.
Soane was renowned as a master of light — he used it in the way a great painter tells a story on canvas, highlighting or hiding their subject. He projected it through ceiling lanterns, spotlighting and enlarging the chambers below, he squeezed it through fanlights, skylights and domes, making small rooms look large and presenting unexpected views. He used coloured glass and screened windows to diffuse light, softening the edges of the entrance hall and giving it a dreamlike quality. He even bounced it off mirrors, multiplying reflections, creating illusions of depth and extending the space beyond its physical limits.
Soane was greatly influenced by his two-year Grand Tour of Italy from 1778 to 1780
Pitzhanger’s central core is pure Soane: a dignified brick façade, framed by four grand Ionic columns picked out in Portland stone which transform into caryatids at the upper level — these structural female statues are inspired by those at the Erechtheion, one of the temples on the Acropolis in Athens.
Next to them are roundels illustrating Florentine lions, and plaques filled with classical figures. Soane was greatly influenced by his two-year Grand Tour of Italy from 1778 to 1780, so his work often contains an architectural swatch of classical motifs. The original Athenian caryatids were carved in stone but here Soane uses a new material — a highly fired blend of clay, flint and glass waste called Coade stone, after its inventor, Eleanor Coade of Lambeth.
Upper Drawing Room at Pitzhanger Manor
Andy Stagg
Behind the front lie rooms of subtle invention: a domed hall, elegant parlour and bright breakfast room. Even the garden front, with its incised pilasters and fanciful “Chinese” balcony, shows Soane’s taste for refinement and surprise.
To one side of the house, opposite Dance’s retained wing, Soane created a series of Roman ruins — inspired no doubt by his travels to Italy. His intention was to give his new house a long and romantic past, rooting it in a fake story that began with Rome’s conquest of Britain, then saw the house’s conversion to a monastery, later dissolved by Henry VIII and finally turned into a Tudor mansion!
The dynasty that never was
Sadly, his ambition that Pitzhanger would be the engine room of an architectural dynasty never materialised. To his “severe mortification” his eldest son, John, not only gave up on being an architect but then married a “Miss Preston” against his wishes. He also fell out with his younger son, George. In his extreme disappointment, and after just 10 years, Soane sold the house. It was not an easy sale — it took 65 adverts in newspapers to find his buyer.
In Soane’s time the grounds extended across what is now Ealing Green and the surrounding parkland. He designed the landscape with deliberately framed views of the house — the Georgian version of curated Instagram angles. Visitors would stroll along winding paths, past a serpentine lake, catching glimpses of columns or caryatids through trees. The great artist JMW Turner, one of Soane’s many Regency era guests, is supposed to have fished in the lake.
Pitzhanger Manor library
Pitzhanger Manor
After Soane sold the house it went through a large number of owners, including the daughters of Spencer Percival, the prime minister. New owners mean change, so the Roman ruins have long since gone, to be replaced by more recent extensions. Ealing Council purchased Pitzhanger in 1900, and since then the house has been a public library, a museum, a film location, a place of education and an art gallery.
After an extensive period of renovation, you can walk the chambers imagining the chatter of Soane’s many guests
Today, after an extensive period of renovation completed in 2019, you can walk the chambers imagining the chatter of Soane’s many guests, or stand and admire the work inspired by him in the art gallery.
Alternatively, you can step outside into Walpole Park and imagine Turner pulling a trout from its lake, or the great man himself sketching the building that is his autobiography. The irony is that Pitzhanger was meant to launch a great architectural dynasty — a Soane line to rival the Adam and Wyatt families. That was never to be, but his spirit still very much lives on in the modern art inspired by him in the gallery, in the grand old bones of the building itself and, most of all, in that gorgeous, luminous light.
Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing Green, W5
John Darlington is Director of Projects for World Monuments Fund