Osterley House near Heathrow

This is the front of Osterley House under the flight path to Heathrow.

It really shouldn't work since it combines two great houses financed by large fortunes made in trade and commerce in the City of London. One Elizabethan for Sir Thomas Gresham, the other neo-classical for Sir Francis Child.

The original building here was the manor house built for the renowned banker Sir Thomas Gresham, who purchased the manor of Osterley in 1562. The House was completed in 1576. Sir Thomas made a great fortune as financial adviser successively to Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I - who visited him at Osterley. He rescued the Pound under Edward and founded the Royal Exchange under Elizabeth. The structure of the house is Gresham's.

Two hundred years later his manor house was falling into disrepair, when, as the result of a mortgage default, it came into the ownership of Sir Francis Child, the head of Child's Bank and a Director of the East India Company. In 1761 Child employed Robert Adam, who was emerging as one of the most fashionable architects in England, to fundamentally remodel the house.

When Sir Francis died in 1763, the project was taken up by his brother and heir Robert Child, for whom the interiors were created. The house is of red brick with white stone details and is approximately square, with turrets in the four corners. Adam's design incorporates some of the earlier structure and is highly unusual. The result thus differs greatly in style from the original construction. The front - seen here - is left open and is spanned by an Ionic pedimented screen which is approached by a broad flight of steps and leads into a central courtyard.

The great glory of the House is Adam's neoclassical interiors. The rooms have elaborate plasterwork, rich, highly varied colour schemes. Adam practised "total design" incorporating the house, the rooms and even the principal bed.