Earls and Dukes of Northumberland have been resident in Syon House for most of the past 400 years. It is now a family home for the 10th Duke who succeeded his father when he was killed in action in Flanders in 1940 and is descended from the line initiated by Sir Hugh Smithson and Lady Elizabeth. Elizabeth was the daughter of the Duke of Somerset. Sir Hugh, who had become the Earl of Northumberland by the efforts of his father-in-law and assumed the surname of the Percy family, was advanced to the dukedom by George III. The founder of the Percy family to which Syon was given by Elizabeth I in 1594 had arrived with William the Conqueror. The Earldom of Northumberland was granted to the fourth Lord Percy of Alnwick in 1377. The last of that line was the eleventh Earl who died in 1670.

The house was built by the Duke of Somerset who was Protector of the Realm during Edward VI's minority when he acquired the estate of the demolished monastery in 1547. After the death of the 11th Earl of Northumberland it had passed to his three year old daughter who had later married Charles 6th Duke of Somerset. That marriage was three months after the murder of her second husband and before she reached her majority. So, to date (1999), Syon house has been in the ownership of the Somersets for 113 years and the Northumberlands for 339.

O/S Co-ords:1723.7670
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Rural Walks around Richmond

Syon House - A seat of the Duke of Northumberland