The Orangery, Clapham, London

Surrounded by a twentieth century housing estate in south London, this classical building comes as something of a surprise. The Orangery, as it is known today, was once a feature of the pleasure grounds of Robert Thornton’s house on the edge of Clapham Common.

Thornton (1759-1826), an MP and businessman, had inherited a substantial fortune from his merchant father, John Thornton (1720-1790). Robert’s house stood in a small landscaped park with lakes, and in around 1792 he added this elegant building. Over the door is an inscription from Virgil which gives a clue as to the purpose of the fine structure: HIC VER ASSIDUUM ATQUE ALIENIS MENSIBUS AESTAS, which translates as ‘Here is eternal spring and summer in months not her own’, or ‘Tis here eternal spring and summer all the year’: the building was a greenhouse, where tender plants could be kept alive in the colder months of the year.

The artist Joseph Farington visited in 1806, with his friend William Wilberforce, and noted in his diary that the Orangery was built to a design by Dr Burgh of York. William Burgh (1741-1808) was Irish-born, but lived in York for many years. He doesn’t seem to have a history as an amateur architect, but he was a friend of the poet and garden designer William Mason, and wrote a commentary to accompany the 1783 edition of Mason’s poem The English Garden. In this text Burgh wrote that Mason’s lines about a greenhouse ‘where rare and alien plants/might safely flourish’ was inspired by the French writer and landscape designer René Louis Girardin. Girardin published De La Composition des Paysages in 1777, in which he suggested that a greenhouse with a background of trees would form a ‘jolie tableau‘. Girardin’s concept and Mason’s lines were brought to life in Clapham.

Long since lost is a marble tablet which was inside the building. It was inscribed with an extract from William Cowper’s poem The Task, including these lines which echo the quotation from Virgil on the frieze:

Unconscious of a less propitious clime,
There blooms exotic beauty, warm and snug,
While the winds whistle, and the snows descend.

The pediment is decorated with what are believed to be Coade stone ornaments. In the engraving (above) the central plaque appears to feature a profile, but if that was the case it has disappeared, and it is not known who or what it represented (by the mid-20th century the oval space was a window which lit the attic behind the pediment). The Greenhouse, as it was originally known, had a view of a serpentine canal and lawns and then over a haha to the meadows and another serpentine lake beyond. The Greenhouse was originally furnished with huge sash windows, with curious glazing between the columns – rather like stretcher bond in brickwork (see the photo’ below).

In 1808 Queen Charlotte, the Princesses and the Dukes of Cumberland and Cambridge visited the Thorntons at their ‘Clapham Villa’, and were shown the Greenhouse, but soon after Thornton got into financial difficulties. The Thornton Estate was offered for sale in 1810 when it was described as a ‘most superb villa’ with gardens full of native and exotic species ‘now in the highest state of cultivation’. The map in the sales particulars shows the ‘Greenhouse’ overlooking one of the serpentine lakes.

The estate was on the market again in 1851 when the ‘beautiful conservatory of Portland stone’ was described as ‘commanding views over the pleasure grounds and rich meadow land, which presents the appearance of a small park’.

The estate was bought by a Belgian order of nuns who established the Notre Dame convent and school on the site. New buildings were added, playing fields and tennis courts were laid out, and the girls could row on the serpentine lake and ride ponies in the grounds.

The convent closed in 1939 but its name lives on in the Notre Dame Estate, which was developed on the site of the convent and former Thornton gardens soon after the Second World War.

All that remains today of the pleasure grounds is the Orangery, which serves as an elegant backdrop to a recreation ground in the middle of the Notre Dame Estate. In the early 1950s the writer E.M. Forster, whose great-aunt Marianne was a Thornton, visited Clapham and found ‘no Thornton memorial except a dilapidated Orangery’. He was saddened that the site had been cleared ‘at a time when development was unusually ruthless’.

Unsurprisingly, the windows were the first casualty when the building stood empty, and today the rather forlorn building stands behind security fencing.

The Orangery has been largely without a purpose since the estate was constructed. Drawings by the Borough of Wandsworth Engineer, Surveyor and Architect show that the building was consolidated in 1955 when it was listed at Grade II, and it has had occasional remedial works ever since. The Orangery is on Historic England’s Buildings at Risk Register and, despite much debate and local support, a viable future for the structure remains to be found.

For more lost London gardens, including some follies, look out for an exhibition at the Garden Museum which opens in October 2024 https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/the-lost-gardens-of-london/

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