Kew - History

History

The earliest written reference to Kew is thought to be contained in Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, as the location where the Roman Army forded the Thames in 54 BC. Henry V developed a Carthusian monastery to the south west of where Kew Observatory now stands.

Successive Tudor, Stuart and Georgian monarchs maintained links with Kew.

Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester was granted lands at Kew in 1517. When he died in 1526 he left his Kew estates to his third wife, Eleanor, with the remainder to his son George. In 1538 Sir George Somerset sold the house for £200 to Thomas Cromwell, who resold it for the same amount to Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. Brandon had probably already inhabited Kew during the life of his wife Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VII and widow of Louis XII. According to John Leland's Cygnea Cantio ("Swan Song"), she stayed in Kew (which he refers to as "Cheva") for a time after her return to England.

One of Henry VIII's closest friends, Henry Norris, lived at Kew Farm, which was later owned by Elizabeth I's favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. This large palatial house on the Thames riverbank predated the royal palaces of Kew Palace and the White House. Excavations at Kew Gardens in 2009 revealed a wall that may have belonged to the property.

In Elizabeth's reign, and under the Stuarts, houses were developed along Kew Green. West Hall, which survives in West Hall Road, dates from at least the 14th century and the present house was built at the end of the 17th century.

Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I, was given a household at Kew in 1608.

Queen Anne subscribed to the building of the parish church on Kew Green, which was dedicated to St Anne in 1714, three months before the queen's death.

The Hanoverians maintained the strongest links with Kew, in particular Princess Augusta who founded the botanic gardens and her husband Frederick, Prince of Wales who lived at the White House in Kew. Augusta, as Dowager Princess of Wales, continued to live there until her death in 1721. Frederick commissioned the building of the first substantial greenhouse at Kew Gardens.

In 1721 the future George III and Queen Charlotte moved into the White House at Kew. They established their main summer court at Kew in the 1760s and 1770s and patronised artists such as Thomas Gainsborough and John Zoffany. Queen Charlotte died at the Dutch House in Kew in 1818.

William IV spent most of his early life at Richmond and at Kew Palace, where he was educated by private tutors.

During the French Revolution, many refugees established themselves at Kew.