This was a fine three-storey building of seven bays built in the restoration style by Sir Stephen Fox (1627-1716) on ground that he acquired in 1691. It was demolished for the development of the estate in 1896. A contemporary records it as being:

large and extraordinarily well finished, nor does it stoop for fine furniture, curious paintings, etc., to many in England. In the compartment at the south door is good painting in fresco...The gardens are extraordinarily fine, and the collection very curious and costly...and the hospitality within is equal to the magnificence without.

O/S Co-ords:2147.7823
Source(s):

Chiswick

Sir Stephen (1627-1716) spent the last 30 years of his life in Chiswick, twenty five of them here in the Manor Farm House that he built on land he acquired in 1691. As a lad he was a chorister in Salisbury Cathedral and then a valet to an Earl of Northumberland but came to be director of the Ordnance Board for the Royalists in 1642. He served Charles II closely throughout his banishment following the civil war and returned with a knighthood and to positions which allowed him to have accumulated wealth of £200,000 by 1680, Yet he retained the opinion of the diarist Evelyn as having acquired that 'honestly got and unenvied, which is next to a miracle' because, Evelyn says he was still 'as humble and as ready to do a courtesy as ever he was.' Fox also served James II and William III but retired on Anne's accession in 1701. His first wife died in 1696 but on 11/07/1703, i.e., at 76 years of age, he married again to the companion of his daughter-in-law Mrs Margaret Hope who bore him four children of which the two surviving boys became the Lords Ilchester and Holland.

O/S Co-ords:2147.7823
Source(s):

Chiswick