ABSTRACT
The Duke of Chandos was involved in a number of building projects, the most important of which was the remodelling of Cannons, his country house near Edgware in Middlesex. The Duke acquired the estate from his first wife’s uncle, Warwick Lake, in May 1713. He decided to rebuild the existing Jacobean house and then did so in the years 1713 to 1725 (see p. 10).2 Contemporary descriptions indicate that when construction was finished it was such a magnificent building that visitors flocked to see it. Chandos entertained there on a lavish scale and his brother Henry’s diary records some of the exotic guests who dined there, for instance, the ‘2 [American] Indian Kings’ at Easter 1720 and the ‘2 African Princes’ in 1721.3
Cannons did not long survive the Duke’s death. The house was dismantled under the auctioneer’s hammer in a twelve-day sale beginning on 16 June 1747 and the catalogue of ‘all the Materials of the Dwelling-House, Out-Houses &c’ listed the chimneypieces, flooring and brickwork.4 The furniture-maker William Hallett (1707-81/82) bought materials and land in the auction, which he used in building a new house on the site, where he lived from about 1754.5 The magnificence of Cannons died with the first Duke. Despite its destruction however, the building’s splendour can be reconstructed from a
1 Huntington Library, Stowe Manuscripts, ST 57 Vol. 16, f. 270, a letter from the Duke of Chandos to Lord Bingley, dated 3 September 1719.
