Syon House: An Architectural Palimpsest

Syon House, the country house of the Dukes of Northumberland across the Thames from Kew Gardens, is famed for the work of Robert Adam, which in the years 1762 to 1769 gave such a stamp of splendour to its State Rooms that Mr. Lees-Milne has written of it as unquestionably able to “hold its own with the lesser palaces of the Continent.”1 But to see only the hand of Adam in the making of this great house is to miss mcch of its historical significance and of its architectural interest, for like so many English country houses it is in reality a palimpsest in stone.