Pitzhanger Manor - John Soane

John Soane

By the 1790s John Soane had a successful architectural practice in London, holding the post of architect to the Bank of England. In 1794 he, his wife and their two young sons moved into 12 Lincoln's Inn Fields (now part of Sir John Soane's Museum) in central London, which doubled as an architecture office for him and his staff.

In early 1800 Soane decided to acquire a family home to the west of London. At first he planned to have it purpose built, but on 21 July 1800 he visited Pitzhanger, which he heard was available, and seeing its potential offered the trustees £4,500 for the whole estate of 28 acres (110,000 m2). This was accepted on the first day of the following month. Soane referred to it as Pitzhanger Manor-house.

Soane worked vigorously on the designs of the new house, and over a hundred designs for it still exist and are held by Sir John Soane's Museum. He planned for the demolition of the older part of the house and many of the outbuildings; however, he retained the two-storey south wing designed by George Dance in part because of admiration for their interiors and in part in respect for Dance, his first employer. Demolition work started in 1800 and most of the rebuilding was complete by late 1803.

Completed in 1804, the central section of the house uses many typical Soane features: curved ceilings, inset mirrors, false doors, and wooden paneling with many cupboards. Soane continued the building to the east with a servants' wing (perhaps an adaptation of existing buildings) and romantic ruins. (All the buildings in this eastern part of the site were demolished in or around 1901.) The building is remarkably similar to his main London home at Lincoln's Inn Fields (now the Soane Museum). Much of his collection of paintings and classical antiquities now at the museum was housed in Pitzhanger Manor.

Soane sold the house in 1810 and it then passed through several hands until in 1843 it became home to the daughters of Britain's only assassinated Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval.

Since Soane's time, the house has been referred to variously as The Manor, or Pitshanger Manor, but has now formally reverted to the name given to it by Soane, spelt with a Z.