Addison (1672-1719) was an essayist, a classical scholar and a politician (he was an MP from 1708 to his death) who is buried in Westminster Abbey. There are letters addressed from him here to various correspondents. His friends included Jonathan Swift, whom he met through his work as chief secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and of Richard Steele with whom he founded the Tatler. He was a member of the Kit Kat club which had its rooms in a cottage across the river at Barn Elms. In 1708 he wrote to Henry Rich, Earl of Warwick and Holland, whose mother he married in 1716 and included a picture of this neighbourhood's rural past:

I want to invite you to a concert of music which I have found in a neighbouring wood. It consists of a blackbird, a thrush, a robin redbreast and a bull finch. There is a lark by the way of an overture, the whole is concluded by a nightingale...'

O/S Co-ords:2614.7688
Source(s):

A History of Fulham

Chambers Biographical Dictionary