Fenton House

Fenton House, the oldest surviving residential property in Hampstead, London, is renowned for housing a playable collection of historical keyboard instruments dating back to 1540. Built in the 1680s by William Eades, the house was bought in 1706 by Joshua Gee, a business partner of George Washington's father. It was bequeathed to the nation in 1952 by Lady Katherine Binning alongside her porcelain collection.

London · from the walk “Hampstead Uncovered: Village Secrets & Heath Legends” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Fenton House, Hampstead Grove, London NW3 6SP

What connection does London's Fenton House have to George Washington?

Look at you, Fenton House... hiding quietly behind those tall garden walls. This is thought to be the oldest surviving residential property in Hampstead. And it has one of the strangest origin stories of any house in London.......... In the sixteen eighties, during the last years of James the Second's reign, a builder named William Eades designed and constructed this house as a speculative investment... meaning he intended to sell it the moment it was finished. You see, London had just suffered the dual disasters of the Great Plague in sixteen sixty five and the Great Fire the following year, and Hampstead... up on this hill, with its clean air... became the place where wealthy merchants fled to escape the grime below.......... Now here's a detail most people walk right past. The house was known in the early eighteenth century as Ostend House, suggesting its first owner may have been a City merchant with Flemish trading connections. Then it was called Clock House. The name Fenton only came later.......... And who bought it in seventeen oh six? A Quaker linen merchant named Joshua Gee... who was Also involved in the iron trade and co-founded a company in America. One of his early partners was a man called Augustine Washington... the father of George Washington. That's right. In seventeen fifteen, Gee and Augustine Washington founded the Principio Company, backed by British iron-masters and merchants, producing pig iron in Maryland and Virginia for sale in England. The future first president of the United States may well owe part of his family fortune to deals hatched by a man who once lived in This house.......... But the real magic inside is what you can Hear. One of the treasures of the house is the internationally significant collection of early keyboard instruments, dating back to fifteen forty, kept in playing condition with weekly tuning and played by volunteer musicians. This is the legacy of Major George Benton Fletcher, who believed that music should be played on the instruments for which it was written, and set out to revive the neglected art of harpsichord playing. His first purchase was a harpsichord from a second-hand shop. He found an eighteenth century spinet in a Welsh outhouse and rescued a virginals that was being used... as a carpenter's workbench.......... In nineteen thirty four he found an elegant but dilapidated Charles the Second town house called Old Devonshire House in Holborn, restored it, and filled it with his growing collection. He gave this and his instruments to the National Trust in nineteen thirty eight. Then tragedy struck. Old Devonshire House was totally destroyed in a Luftwaffe bombing raid on Holborn in May nineteen forty one. Some priceless instruments were lost forever. But the core of the collection survived... and eventually found its permanent home right here.......... The last private owner was Lady Katherine Binning, the wealthy widow of the heir to the Earl of Haddington. She bought Fenton House in nineteen thirty six and filled it with her large collection of porcelain, furniture and embroidery. When she passed in nineteen fifty two, she gave it all to the nation.......... So take a moment. Stand still. If you're lucky, you might just hear the faint notes of a four hundred year old harpsichord drifting through these walls... music played exactly as it was meant to be heard.

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