Osterley Park and House

The Grade I listing was made on 21 May 1973 as list entry 1080308. The original house was built in the 1570s for Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange, and completed in 1576; his Elizabethan stable block survives with a Grade I entry of its own, NHLE 1358341. Robert Adam remodelled the house between 1761 and 1765 for Francis Child and, after Francis's death in 1763, for his brother Robert Child, and Horace Walpole called the drawing room "worthy of Eve before the fall". The estate straddles the Ealing and Hounslow boundary, and the house and the registered park sit on the Hounslow side. Eleven list entries fall inside the registered park — four at Grade I, one at Grade II and six at Grade II — so ten stand beyond the house: the Elizabethan stables, NHLE 1358341; the Aviary or Little Orangery, NHLE 1080309; The Temple, NHLE 1189780; the Roman Bridge at the park's northern edge, Grade II, NHLE 1079401; the entrance lodges, NHLE 1358342; Osterley Park Farmhouse, NHLE 1240735; the garden walls north and south of the farmhouse, NHLE 1240736 and NHLE 1240723; a bridge within the park, NHLE 1390982; and gate piers within the park, NHLE 1391000. The shop and Stables Café open 10am to 5pm on weekdays and 9.30am to 5pm at weekends, the second-hand bookshop daily 11am to 4.30pm, and cycle hire Thursday to Sunday 10.30am to 3.30pm. Osterley Underground station, 860 m away on the Piccadilly line, is the practical arrival point; there is no National Rail station within 1.8 km.