Osterley Park, Greater London, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest: 

An 18th century landscape park and pleasure grounds laid out on the site of an earlier formal garden, with substantial additional tree planting being undertaken in the 19th and 20th centuries.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Osterley Park is situated about 14.5 kilometres to the west of Hyde Park, about 5 kilometres to the north of Hounslow, 4 kilometres to the west of Gunnersbury Park, about 2.5 kilometres to the north of Syon Park, and about 8 kilometres north-east of Heathrow Airport. Osterley Park is bounded to the east by Windmill Lane (B464). Jersey Road, including the gardens to the rear of houses on this road, forms the boundary to the south. Agricultural land and playing fields define the boundary to the west, and Tentlow Lane (A4127) the north-west boundary. The site, which occupies about 217 hectares, is largely level with a very slight slope from the north-east down to the south-west. It is dominated by three pieces of water: the Garden Lake (about 2 hectares), the Middle Lake (about 5.5 hectares), and the North Lake (about 3 hectares). The M4 motorway cuts across the northern part of the site.

REFERENCES used by English Heritage:

Brewer, Brayley and Nightingale, The Beauties of England and Wales (1816)

W Keane, Beauties of Middlesex (1850)

Gardeners' Chronicle, ii (1885), pp 261-262, 267-268, 272

Country Life, 60 (20 November 1926), pp 782-791; (27 November 1926), pp 818-826; (4 December 1926), pp 858-867

B Cherry and N Pevsner, The Buildings of England: London 3 North-West (1991), pp 438-442

National Trust Garden Survey, (unpublished report 1980) [copy on EH file]

Maps

J Rocque, Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster and Borough of Southwark, published 1746

Heston Enclosure Award, Plan B, 1818 [reproduced in NT Garden Survey 1980]

Greenwood, Map of Middlesex, 1818-1819

Plan of Osterley made to accompany an offer of a lease, 1832 [reproduced in NT Garden Survey 1980]

Estate map, 1875 [reproduced in NT Garden Survey 1980]

OS 6" to 1 mile: 2nd edition published 1896

3rd edition published 1920

OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1865

2nd edition published 1894-1896

3rd edition published 1913

Description written: April 2000

Edited: July 2001