Thatched House Lodge - History

History

The residence was originally built as two houses in 1673 for two Richmond Park Keepers, as Aldridge Lodge. It was enlarged, possibly by William Kent, in 1727 as a home for Sir Robert Walpole. The two houses were joined in 1771 by Sir John Soane and renamed Thatched House Lodge. It had also been known as Burkitt's Lodge.

The house was used by various members of the Royal Household, including General Sir Edward Bowater, and General Lynedoch Gardiner, respectively Equerry to the Prince Consort and to Queen Victoria. Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet retired to the house after he successfully operated on King Edward VII's appendix in 1902.

Later Thatched House Lodge became the home of Wing Commander Sir Louis Greig (equerry to King George VI, when he was Duke of York), and then the Duke of Sutherland. It was the London home of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower during the Second World War.

Read more about this topic:  Thatched House Lodge

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    False history gets made all day, any day,
    the truth of the new is never on the news
    False history gets written every day
    ...
    the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
    sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
    asking the clay all questions but her own.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.
    Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)