A carved fire surround from Sir Winston Churchill’s drawing room

A carved fire surround from Sir Winston Churchill’s drawing room. This carved pine fire surround combines elements of both Rococo and Palladian designs.  It has a shaped cornice above a frieze of foliate arabesques and floral garlands centred on a raised panel of confronting C-scrolls, leaves and flowerheads.  The supports have recesses at the corners and the whole inner edge is decorated with a gadrooned border.  English, circa 1910.

Provenance:  28 Hyde Park Gate, London, home of Sir Winston and Baroness Churchill from 1945 until Sir Winston’s death in 1965

Literature: Knight, Frank and Rutley The London Home of the late Sir Winston Churchill, K.G., O.M., C.M., and of Baroness Spencer-Churchill G.B.E., 28 Hyde Park Gate together with 27 Hyde Park Gate auctioned 28^th October 1965 (the fire surround pictured in situ in the drawing room of number 28)

Country Life, 2^nd September 1965 illustrated in an advert for the above sale.

Illustrated London News, 5^th December 1959 cover featured the Churchills in the drawing room at No. 28 to celebrate Sir Winston’s 85^th birthday. 

28 Hyde Park Gate was built in 1842 and described, by the Bayswater Chronicle in 1945, as ‘a pleasant red-brick house, which has three reception rooms and nine or ten bedrooms’ on which ‘a lot of money has been spent’.  However, after losing the general election of 1945, Churchill bought 28 Hyde Park Gate as a London base (his other home being Chartwell, in Kent and immediately had it redecorated.  One room was assigned as what he called his ‘snob library’ of beautifully bound books.  The walls were hung with pictures of his aristocratic ancestors, who included the Ist Duke of Marlborough, victor of the Battle of Blenheim.  The following year he also purchased number 27, next door, for £7,000, originally for use as office accommodation.  He later had the two houses combined and they formed his longest standing London residence. (English Heritage.)