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A Stuart house barely altered since the 1670s, by the river below Richmond, with the Duchess of Lauderdale's furniture still where her inventory put it.
Ham was built in 1610 for Sir Thomas Vavasour, a courtier of James I, and it survived the century that followed because of one woman. Elizabeth Murray inherited it from her father, kept it through the Commonwealth by charming Cromwell while spying for the exiled king, and in 1672 married the Duke of Lauderdale, Charles II's minister for Scotland and one of the five men of the Cabal; together they doubled the house and filled it with the most expensive things the Restoration could buy. Then the money ran out, the family sank into obscurity, and nobody redecorated. The inventories of 1677 and 1683 list the furniture, the silks, the lacquer cabinets and the pictures, and most of them are still in the rooms they name, which is true of almost no other house in the country. The National Trust took it in 1948 and has put the gardens back to the seventeenth-century plan, with the Cherry Garden's lavender parterre and the wilderness of hornbeam walks. The Duchess, by repute, has never left.
| Monday | 12:00 – 16:00 |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | 12:00 – 16:00 |
| Wednesday | 12:00 – 16:00 |
| Thursday | 12:00 – 16:00 |
| Friday | 12:00 – 16:00 |
| Saturday | 12:00 – 16:00 |
| Sunday | 12:00 – 16:00 |
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