Haverford House is the London home of the Dukes of Haverford.
It is on the bank of the Thames upriver from London, facing the road but with extensive gardens behind leading down the river, where a watergate lets on to a wharf.
Haverford House is built in the form of an H, with the cross bar containing most of the public rooms. The right side is given over to family and guest rooms. On the left, the rooms to the road side of the cross bar comprise the Heir’s Wing, where adult Marquises of Aldridge have lived since the house was built in the late sixteenth century. On the river side of the cross bar, the same wing contains large entertaining spaces, including a massive ballroom and a banqueting hall, plus further guest rooms. The work of the duchy is administered and managed through a series of rooms centred on the room always called (with initial capitals) The Duke’s Study, on the ground floor at the far left of the cross bar.
The impact of the house is described in A Baron for Becky.
Hugh had been in the heir’s wing many times, and at Haverford, the family seat, when he was a boy. He had never entered Haverford House by the main door. Designed to impress, the approach sat back from the road, admittance through a gatekeeper. They were paraded through the paved courtyard by another liveried servant to the stairs between pillars that stretched three stories to the pediment above.
Inside, the ducal glory continued; a marbled entrance chamber the height of the house that would make a ballroom in any lesser mansion, with majestic flights of stairs rising on either side and curving to meet, only to split again in a symphony of wood and stone. Grenford ancestors were everywhere, twice as large as life, painted on canvas and moulded from stone, cold eyes examining petitioners and finding them all unworthy.
Aldridge met them in the entrance chamber, and led them up the first flight of stairs and down a sumptuously carpeted hall that was elegantly papered above richly carved panels. Four men could have walked arm-in-arm down the middle, never touching the furniture and art lining both walls, between highly-polished doors.
Busts on marble pedestals alternated with delicate gilded tables and seats upholstered in the Haverford green, scarlet and gold, many embroidered with the unicorn and phoenix from the Haverford coat of arms. The art in gilded frames that hung both walls showed more Grenford ancestors, interspersed with favourite animals, scenes from the Bible, and retellings of Greek legends. The ornately painted ceiling boasted flowers, leaves, and decorative swirls, the many colours highlighted in gilding.
Here and there, an open door gave them a view into one large chamber after another, each room richer than the last. At intervals, curtained arches led to more halls, more stairs.
Hugh was openly gawping, and Becky drew closer to him, as if for protection.
“A bit over the top, don’t you think?” he whispered to her, and was rewarded with a quick, nervous, smile.
