Map

The overlays that highlight 17th century London features are approximate and derived from Wenceslaus Hollar’s maps:

Open location in Google Maps: 51.505110, -0.428853

Summary

The house is described in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 3:

The first Sir John Bennet lived at Uxbridge but his successors occupied Dawley House, which stood on the site used in 1959 as a car-park in the E.M.I. factory grounds on the west of Dawley Road. It may be assumed to have always been the manorhouse. Sir John Bennet, 1st Lord Ossulston, probably rebuilt the house or made large alterations to it: he was assessed for sixteen hearths in the parish in 1664 and for 27 some years later. A print of 1695-1714 shows an imposing house built round a court-yard in two stories, with attics in a steeply pitched roof, and with nine bays on the south front. There were extensive out-buildings on the east by the road, and formal gardens to the south and west. The 18th-century park was also formed by the Bennets. Robert Corbet had 36 acres of wood in Dawley in 1200, and in 1515 Richard Aubrey of Dawley converted 100 acres to pasture. In 1657 there seem to have been some 200 acres attached to the house apart from farm-lands. In 1690 John, Lord Ossulston, received licence to impark 300 acres and the print of 1695-1714 shows a great double avenue stretching away to the north. Dawley Road, however, seems from the print to have curved round the north side of the house so that the avenue lay beyond. In 1707 Charles, Lord Ossulston, apparently contemplated inclosing part of a road from Hillingdon Common to Harlington, and he may in fact have moved the road away from the house to the boundary of his land and of the parish. Certainly Dawley Road followed its later line along the boundary by the time a map of the park was drawn between 1714 and 1722. This shows extensive formal gardens and plantations, with avenues radiating in all directions over the park, which comprised the whole of the parish north of the approximate line of Bourne Avenue. This area seems to have comprised about 245 acres, though the park was said at some date in the 18th century to cover 373 acres. It was then stocked with 750 head of deer.

The map location is a rough guess, with one source placing the house just north of the junction of Dawley Road and North Hyde Road.

Here is an image of the house.

4 Annotations

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Dawley, Hillingdon

The manor was listed in Domesday Book as Dallega, a name that may have derived from Old English words meaning ‘woodland clearing at a hollow’ or ‘woodland clearing held in common’.

The statesman and writer Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke acquired the 17th-century Dawley House in 1725 and substantially rebuilt it; Dryden, Pope, Swift and Voltaire were among his visitors here.

In 1755 Henry, Earl of Uxbridge, added the manor to his extensive landholdings in the district and built a mile-long wall around Dawley House to keep out smallpox, or rather unwanted visitors who might have been carrying it. A section of the wall has survived to the present day and is locally listed. It now forms part of the boundary of Stockley Park.

Dawley House was demolished in 1776 and its once-beautiful gardens became brickfields. The de Salis family acquired the estate and sold it off little by little over the following 160 years. http://hidden-london.com/gazettee…

Log in to post an annotation.

If you don't have an account, then register here.

References

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

1665

  • Sep