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Location: Holland House, Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, United Kingdom. (51°30′9″N 0°12′9″W).
Holland House
Holland House, originally known as Cope Castle, was a great house in Kensington in London, situated in what is now Holland Park. Created in 1605 in the Elizabethan or Jacobean style[a] for the diplomat Sir Walter Cope, the building later passed to the powerful Rich family, then the Fox family, under whose ownership it became a noted gathering-place for Whigs in the 19th century. The house was largely destroyed by German firebombing during the Blitz in 1940; today only the east wing and some ruins of the ground floor still remain.
History of Holland House:
Cope commissioned the house in 1604 from the architect John Thorpe. The building was of a common shape for large houses of the time, containing a centre block and two porches.. The building received a large expansion between 1625 and 1635 at the direction of Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland, Cope's son-in law and owner of the building, who added two wings and arcades.
In 1629, Rich commissioned Inigo Jones to design and the master mason Nicholas Stone to carve a pair of Portland stone piers, in order to support large wooden gates for the house. The piers, still extant, take the form of Doric columns on pedestals, and originally supported carved griffins bearing the arms of the Rich family and Cope family, symbolising the two families' union.
The piers have been moved to new positions on several occasions. While their exact original position is not known, a survey in 1694 showed them as being on the drive leading to the house's main entrance on its south side. In 1848, as part of a major restructuring of the house by the 4th Lord Holland, the piers were moved to the eastern side of the house. Following the house's destruction in the Second World War, and the conversion in 1959 of the remains of the east wing into a youth hostel, the piers were returned to the south side.
