Haydon Hill House
This Italianate pile overlooks Attenborough's Fields. Known as Haydon Hill House, it is a Grade II listed building and it's situated just uphill from my son's former primary school. It was designed in the villa style by one Decimus Burton for a Thomas Fonnereau and constructed around 1840. Burton was a protégé of John Nash. Well known for his work in Classical revival styles, Burton was responsible for many notable commissions, including the Palm House and Temperate House at Kew Gardens. Fonnereau was an artist descended from Huguenot merchants. His grandfather had been Director of the Bank of England and his father (who died before his son was born) a Member of Parliament and a director of the East India Company.
It became the home of the Attenborough family—who had made their fortune as pawnbrokers in Pimlico, London—later in the 19th Century (hence the naming of the adjoining green space). The house was the childhood home of Sir David and Sir Richard Attenborough and was later requisitioned by the RAF during WWII to serve as a mapping centre. Haydon Hill House was ultimately converted into self-contained apartments in the late 1980s.
Part of Merry Hill Walk.