Who lived at Hogarth’s House
Discussions with visitors to Hogarth’s House before it closed for refurbishment in 2009 revealed that they wanted to know more about it as a home. As a result research was undertaken during the refurbishment to make possible a new presentation of its history. By identifying most of its owners and occupiers, we now understand more about its changing fortunes during almost three centuries.
The builder of the houseThe house was built in the corner of a walled orchard. In 1670 the manor court had given Richard
Downes permission to enclose a plot from Chiswick Common Field; the wall and the surviving mulberry tree may date from this time. Richard left this plot to his wife Susanna, who made her will in 1711, leaving it to her son James and giving his brother Edmond £20 in lieu of a share in it.
The Downes family were bakers. They supplied St Nicholas with communion bread, and Chiswick House owed a large debt, which Susanna’s will stipulated must be paid before her bequests were made. Susannah’s choice of witnesses to her will suggests that she had a building project in mind. The first was Abraham Evans, who lived beside what is now the George & Devonshire. His sister Elizabeth married Thomas Meard, a local carpenter, whose brother John was developing a large area of Soho at that time. The second witness was Thomas Board, also a carpenter, who was regularly paid for repairs to the parish church. He worked on Chiswick House and Burlington House, and was paid for garden carpentry at Sir Stephen Fox’s new house in the 1680s. The third witness was William Browne, from a local brick-making family.
Carpenters and joiners were the house-builders of that time and knew other craftsmen from past projects. For example, Thomas Kirton witnessed Evans’ will, and his forge, only 100 yards away, could supply handles and hinges for the new house. James Downes mortgaged a brick built house with an adjoining garden or orchard to William Taylor in 1718, selling the house to Georg Andreas Ruperti in
1721. As Ruperti is listed as the rate-payer in 1717, the house must have been completed by that date but was perhaps only rented to him at first.
The Rupertis
Ruperti (1670–1731) came from the Harz Mountains in Lower Saxony. His family lived in the Savoy, where he was Pastor to the German Lutheran Church from 1706. Queen Anne’s husband, Prince George, of Denmark, set up a Lutheran Court Chapel at St James’s Palace, where Ruperti became Assistant Pastor in 1711 and one of two Ministers in 1728, on £200 a year.
In 1709 he helped care for German refugees arriving in London following a famine in the Rhineland. They set out believing wrongly that Queen Anne would help them establish new lives across the Atlantic. Ruperti and Pastor John Tribekko were given government funds to house over 13,000 of them, first in barns and warehouses and later in camps at Camberwell and Blackheath, and to list them all. Some eventually went to Ireland, America and Scotland, but only when a large group returned to their homeland did the mass migration stop.
Ruperti’s will left his two daughters by his first wife her household linen and her marriage settlement of 1,000 dollars. He had paid money into the Brunswick Widows’ Cash Fund to support his second wife, Anne Elizabeth, who would also receive her marriage settlement of 1,000 marks. Worried that there would be little left for the small children of his second marriage, he asked friends to seek a royal pension for them, to find a position for his young son and to sell his books.
By coincidence, on the same page of The Daily Journal, March 20 1732, advertisements appeared for the book auction and for Hogarth’s Harlot’s Progress. Over eight evenings 1,090 lots were sold at the Bedford Coffee House, Covent Garden, one of Hogarth’s haunts. Amongst classical texts and religious commentaries were books on angling and gardening, perhaps for his relaxation in Chiswick. The scale of Ruperti’s spending on books could explain his anxieties about money. His widow paid parish rates on the house until 1745, when her name was marked with a P for pauper. The property was probably then neglected, as its value fell from £10 to £7. The London Evening Post,15 April 1749, listed charity apprenticeships arranged for children of poor clergymen in 1748 – among them was her daughter Elizabeth, placed with Mary Lauch, mantua-maker in the Savoy, a prized position making high quality dresses. At 21 her son George inherited the house and soon sold it to William Hogarth.
The Hogarths arrive
The Hogarths knew the area before they took the house in September 1749. William’s friends included Thomas Morell, one of Handel’s librettists, at Turnham Green and John Ranby, the model for Hogarth’s Rake, whose second home was probably in Burlington Lane. Jane’s uncle, David Lewis, a harpist, lived in Twickenham and his son, John, a flautist, had married the sister-in-law of a Clitherow from Boston Manor and lived in Brentford Butts.
With William and Jane came Jane’s widowed mother, Lady Judith Thornhill (d 1757) and cousin, Mary Lewis (1719–1808), the harpist’s daughter, who acted as Jane’s companion and William’s shop-woman. Hogarth’s sister, Anne (1701–1771) and a wealthy spinster, Julian Bere (d1790), also lived with them. All were buried in the family tomb at St Nicholas Church, except Miss Bere, who asked to be buried near her father at Hammersmith. There her property included The Dove, then a coffee-house.
This large household needed extra space so theHogarths added one room on each floor and the value rose to £10 in 1750. Richard Loveday (1731–1812), surgeon and freemason, was a witness to Hogarth’s will in 1764. He then lived in Chiswick Town but later moved to Hammersmith. Jane Hogarth was godmother to Amelia Jane, one of his daughters. Jane bequeathed the house to Mary Lewis for life and then to Mr
Loveday but after his death his adult children sold it.
