Ham House

Summary

A Grade I listed Stuart mansion at Ham in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, built in 1610 for Sir Thomas Vavasour and expanded significantly by the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale in the 1670s, now managed by the National Trust, used as a filming location for The Young Victoria (2009), Anna Karenina (2012), Victoria and Abdul (2017), Rebecca (2020), Taboo (BBC/FX, 2017), Bodyguard (BBC, 2018), The Great (Channel 4, 2020), Mary and George (Sky, 2024), and Bridgerton (Netflix).

About this location

Ham House stands on the south bank of the Thames at Ham in Richmond, Surrey, and is among the best-preserved Stuart houses in England. The original house was completed in 1610 by Sir Thomas Vavasour, Knight Marshal to James I, for whom the Thames-side location provided easy access between the royal palaces at Richmond, Hampton, London and Windsor. The house was built on an H-plan of three storeys and nine bays, with early Jacobean detailing. The architect is not recorded, though survey drawings by Robert Smythson survive.

The house was expanded to its present scale during the ownership of William Murray, a close companion of Charles I, who made significant improvements in the late 1630s, including the Grand Staircase — described by historian Christopher Rowell as “remarkable” and “apparently without a close parallel in the British Isles.” The staircase’s carved wooden balustrade panels, each different and depicting trophies of war, arms, armour and fantastical creatures, were originally gilded. In 1651, the house passed to Murray’s daughter Elizabeth, who became the Duchess of Lauderdale. She and her husband the Duke of Lauderdale — one of the most powerful figures in the Restoration government — remodelled the house on a palatial scale in the 1670s, adding the south range of state apartments with elaborate Baroque decoration, lacquer furniture and the Duchess’s extraordinary closets and bedchamber. The inventory of 1679 survives and has allowed extensive scholarly reconstruction of the original interiors.

After the Lauderdales, the house descended through the Tollemache family, Earls of Dysart, who maintained rather than transformed it over two centuries. The 9th Earl, the last family member to live at Ham, died in 1935, and his second cousin and heir donated the property to the National Trust in 1948.

The volume of film and television production at Ham is exceptional. Films include: Left Right and Centre (1959), Spice World (1997), The Young Victoria (2009, directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, starring Emily Blunt), Never Let Me Go (2010, Mark Romanek, starring Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley), Anna Karenina (2012, Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law), A Little Chaos (2014, Alan Rickman), Victoria and Abdul (2017, Stephen Frears, starring Judi Dench), The Last Vermeer (2019), and Rebecca (2020, Ben Wheatley, starring Lily James and Armie Hammer). Television productions include Sense and Sensibility (BBC, 2008), Taboo (BBC/FX, 2017, written by Tom Hardy and Steven Knight, set in early 19th-century London), Bodyguard (BBC, 2018, Jed Mercurio), Belgravia (ITV, 2020), The Great (Channel 4/Hulu, 2020, Tony McNamara, starring Elle Fanning as Catherine the Great), Mary and George (Sky Atlantic, 2024), and Bridgerton (Netflix, Shonda Rhimes).