The Tower House

About The Tower House

Late Victorian townhouse in the Holland Park district of Kensington and Chelsea, London, built by the architect and designer William Burges

The Tower House, 29 Melbury Road, is a late-Victorian townhouse in the Holland Park district of Kensington and Chelsea, west London, built by the architect and designer William Burges as his own home. Designed between 1875 and 1881 in the French Gothic Revival style, it was described by the architectural historian J. Mordaunt Crook as 'the most complete example of a medieval secular interior produced by the Gothic Revival, and the last'. It is built of red brick with Bath stone dressings and green Cumbrian slates, and its cylindrical tower with a conical roof is its signature seen from the street. The ground floor holds a drawing room, dining room and library, the first floor two bedrooms and an armoury, each room decorated to its own theme with murals, carving and furniture designed by Burges and executed by his long-standing team of craftsmen, among them Thomas Nicholls and Henry Stacy Marks, in work that continued until his death in 1881. Inside and out the house echoes his earlier work in Cardiff, especially Castell Coch. It was listed Grade I in 1949. After Burges it passed to his brother-in-law and then to a series of officers and artists; the poet John Betjeman inherited the lease in 1962, and the guitarist Jimmy Page bought the house from the actor Richard Harris in 1972 and still owns it. It is a private home not open to the public, but its facade and tower can be admired from the pavement on a walk through the quiet streets of Holland Park, a Victorian artists' colony.

Where:

London, United Kingdom