The Chiswick House Camellias by William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire

CHISWICK HOUSE holds a significant place in British architectural history as the former home of Richard Boyle, the 3rd Earl of Burlington, 18th-century Palladianism's chief advocate.

- Jack Watkins

The building, completed in 1729 in the style of a country villa on the Italian Veneto, influenced the style of architecture in this country for decades. The gardens, laid out at about the same time by Burlington, with the aid of Charles Bridgeman and William Kent, are similarly central to the development of English landscape gardening.

Usually occupying a less elevated position in the story of the west London property is a later owner, William Cavendish, the 6th Duke of Devonshire, the creator of the Italian gardens and instigator of its now internationally recognised collection of early-spring-flowering camellias. The 6th Duke was a garden enthusiast who employed a young Joseph Paxton at his Chatsworth estate, where he would eventually design his Great Stove in the 1830s. Before that, however, in 1813, the so-called 'Bachelor Duke' had brought in Samuel Ware at Chiswick to build the 300ft-long conservatory, which survives today as one of the country's earliest glasshouses. Now Grade I listed (the timber superstructure was replaced in the 1930s, but many of the internal features have been retained), initially it was filled with exotic fruits, including peach trees, pineapples and grapevines. By the late 1820s, however, the Duke was switching his attention to growing camellias, bought from the nursery of Chandler and Buckingham of Vauxhall, south London.