Claremont (country House) - Capability Brown's Mansion, Built For Lord Clive of India

Capability Brown's Mansion, Built For Lord Clive of India

When the Duke of Newcastle died in 1768, his widow sold the estate to Robert Clive, founder of Britain's Indian Empire. Although the great house was then little more than fifty years old, it was aesthetically and politically out of fashion. Lord Clive decided to demolish the house and commissioned Lancelot "Capability" Brown to build the present Palladian mansion on higher and dryer ground. Brown, more accomplished as a landscape designer than architect, took on his future son-in-law Henry Holland as a junior partner owing to the scale of the project. John Soane, later Sir John Soane, was employed in Holland's office at this time and worked on the project as a draftsman and junior designer. Holland's interiors for Claremont owe much to the contemporary work of Robert Adam.

A large map now situated in "Clive's room" of the mansion is entitled "Claremont Palace" the map shows the mansion and the surrounding grounds giving a detailed over view of the campus. The map probably dates back to the 1860s when the mansion was frequently occupied by Queen Victoria, thus it being christened a palace; however, the exact date is still unknown.

Clive, by now a fabulously rich nabob, is reputed to have spent over £100,000 on rebuilding the house and a complete remodelling of the celebrated pleasure grounds. However, Clive never lived here, as he died in 1774—the year that the house was finished. The estate then passed through a rapid succession of owners, being first sold 'for not more than one third of what the house and alterations had cost', to Viscount Galway, then to the Earl of Tyrconnel and finally to Charles Rose Ellis.