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A Palladian villa of the 1760s built on sugar and slavery, near-derelict for decades, and restored room by room in a park by the A2.
John Boyd made his fortune as a sugar merchant, which in 1762 meant plantations worked by enslaved people on St Kitts, and spent it on a villa at Danson by Sir Robert Taylor, the architect of the Bank of England's first rooms: a compact Palladian cube with a portico, a spiral stair under a dome, and a dining room painted with panels of the loves of the gods by Charles Pavillon, in a park with a lake laid out in the manner of Capability Brown. Two centuries later the house was empty, dry-rotted and on the point of collapse, one of the most endangered buildings in the country; English Heritage took it on in 1995 and spent ten years and some £4 million putting it back, down to the wallpaper, and handed it to Bexley in 2005. The council opens it on set days, with the story of the Boyds and their money told straight, and the park, the lake and the old stables, now a pub, are open every day.
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