Burgh House & Hampstead Museum

Burgh House in London is a 1704 Queen Anne mansion in Hampstead where physician Doctor William Gibbons popularized mahogany furniture in Britain and author Rudyard Kipling made his final outing in 1936. Originally built as Brook House, its former residents include stained glass artist Thomas Grylls, who designed Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner rose window. Saved from demolition in 1977, the house now functions as the Hampstead Museum.

London Β· from the walk β€œHampstead Uncovered: Village Secrets & Heath Legends” Β· Generated

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Burgh House, New End Square, Hampstead, London NW3 1LT

Which famous author made his final outing to Burgh House in London in 1936?

Take a look at the elegant building before you. Burgh House was constructed in seventeen oh four, during the reign of Queen Anne. But back then, nobody called it Burgh House. It was known as Brook House, built for a well-to-do haberdasher named Henry Sewell and his wife Hannah, who were members of the Society of Friends... the Quakers.

Now, here's what makes its early story truly remarkable. The house sat close to the fashionable Hampstead Wells Spa, where wealthy Londoners came to reinvigorate themselves. And in seventeen twenty, the spa's physician, Doctor William Gibbons, moved in and enlarged the place. If you look at the wrought-iron gate, his initials, W G, can Still be seen on that distinctive Grade Two listed ironwork.

But Doctor Gibbons may have left an even bigger mark on history than those gates. According to William Wadd, the credit of making mahogany fashionable belongs to Gibbons. His brother, a West Indian shipmaster, brought home some of that wood as ballast. The carpenters found it too hard for their tools. But when Mrs Gibbons wanted a candle-box, the doctor insisted it be made from this strange wood. The candle-box was finished and approved... a bureau was then made, and the colour and polish were so pleasing that he invited his friends to come and see it. Among these was the Duchess of Buckingham, and the wood shortly after came into general use. So, every piece of mahogany furniture in Britain... may trace its origins to This house.

The residents only got more colourful from there. An upholsterer named Israel Lewis was found guilty of creating a nuisance by making an enclosed dung stall in his garden, and was fined five pounds!

Then came a stained glass artist named Thomas Grylls, who occupied the house from eighteen eighty four until nineteen oh six. He fathered Twelve children here. And as a partner in the company of Burlison and Grylls, he designed the rose window above Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey!

But the most poignant story belongs to Elsie Bambridge. Between nineteen thirty three and thirty seven, Rudyard Kipling's daughter lived here with her husband, Captain George Bambridge. She later wrote that their life in this house was "a source of happiness to my father to the end of his life." And that was tragically literal. On the twelfth of January, nineteen thirty six, Rudyard and his wife visited George Bambridge, who was in bed at Burgh House with bronchitis. It was to be Rudyard's Last outing... because the following day he was admitted to Middlesex Hospital, where he died on the eighteenth of January.

The great storyteller's final journey into the outside world... ended at This doorstep.

When threatened with demolition in nineteen seventy seven, Melvyn Bragg and Judi Dench supported the campaign to save it, and the community raised the funds to keep it alive. Today, inside the museum, keep an eye out for a curious treasure... a large statue of a penguin that once stood outside the legendary High Hill Bookshop on the High Street to promote Penguin Books. That bookshop is long gone, but the plaster penguin survives here, a charming relic of Hampstead's deep love affair with the written word.

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