Brunswick House

Parts of Brunswick House date back to at least the mid seventeenth century (the vaulted cellar still gives an idea of its size). The current house was developed and extended in 1758 on freehold land owned by the Dawson family, purchased by Richard and Edward Dawson in 1737.

The Dawsons were local glassmakers who had started out apprenticed to the 2nd Duke of Buckingham's Glassworks in Vauxhall in the 1670s. Buckingham, a favourite of Charles II, had acquired the Royal Monopoly in Glass making by 1660 and, with his manager John Bellingham, set about recruiting a team of Venetian glassmakers who helped to revolutionise 17th Century English glassmaking. By 1670, however, the Duke of Buckingham was imprisoned in the Tower on a charge of High Treason and so handed the Glassworks over to the industrious apprentice, Richard Dawson.

Beginning in 1737 the Dawson family appears to have invested at least some of the profits of the Glassworks into the building of a speculative property, in the newly fashionable Palladian style, on a riverside location close to Vauxhall Gardens and the Portsmouth Road.

The edifice completed in 1748, initially christened Belmont House, was described as a "mansion house, with offices, coach-house, and stable, lately erected by John Dawson" (Edward Dawson's nephew, son-in-law and heir). The site of the house and gardens measured nearly three acres and included a piece of land with a timber dock on lease from the Dean of Canterbury.

In 1791 the house, which was then called Belmont House, was divided into two; the larger or southwestern portion was leased to a Mr David Hunter and the other portion was leased to a Mr William Anderson.

Between 1798 and 1809 Emperor John Woodford occupied Belmont House where he housed his botanical and ornithological collection. Here he had land reclaimed from the Thames and constructed hothouses and greenhouses to grow rare and exotic plants as well as constructing a handsome library to contain his many precious books. At Vauxhall Woodford is reported to have cultivated the first Zinnia elegans to be grown in Britain.^[3] Woodford was later obliged to flee Britain, in 1809, having exhausted his personal fortune and misappropriated funds from his office as Chief Inspector and Commissary General of Foreign Corps in the Kings Forces in pursuit of his ornithological and horticultural obsessions. After his absconding from his debtors his greenhouses and library were auctioned off and dismantled.^[4]

In 1811 Anderson's half of the house was purchased by the exiled soldier and aristocrat Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel.^[5]

Frederick William was a bitter opponent of Napoleon's domination of Germany, and had been driven out of his Duchy of Brunswick, escaping to England with his private army in 1809 after defeat by Napoleon in the Battle of Wagram. While in exile in London the Duke took up residence and established his Court-in-Exile at Brunswick House (then still named Belmont House, in deference to the residence of the Duke's mother, the Dowager Duchess of Brunswick, in Greenwich). Frequently travelling between Vauxhall and St James's the Duke was an intimate of the Prince Regent and a familiar figure at court.^[6] During this period the House would have received a consistent stream of royal, diplomatic, military, and intelligence visits. The Dukes apparently morose and melancholic character and his habitul black dress - in mourning for his father and his Duchy - earned him the sobriquet of The Black Duke while in Britain.

In 1813 Frederick William returned to Brunswick to lead an uprising and raise fresh troops. He briefly restored his Ducal sovereignty and rebuilt his army however two years later was to be killed at the head of his men at the Battle of Quatre Bras in 1815.

The departure of the Duke and the Court of Brunswick led to something of a hiatus in the fortunes and character of the house. He was subsequently memorialised when its name was finally altered to Brunswick House in the mid 19th Century.