When Marble Hill was built in the late 1720s, tea was the most fashionable refreshment in England. For Marble Hill’s first owner, Henrietta Howard, taking tea was not only an important part of her daily routine, it also provided opportunities for socialising, and for indulging her great passion for porcelain.
The painting collection formed by Marble Hill’s first owner, Henrietta Howard, was relatively modest. Henrietta only owned 34 paintings including 5 ‘capricci’, fanciful views of Rome by Giovanni Paolo Panini.
Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk (1689-1767), has perhaps been best known as mistress to the Prince of Wales, later George II. However, this talk will show that Howard was much more than a mistress.
‘The Lady in a Veil’, written and performed by Georgina Lock, presents the extraordinary achievements of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: famous wit, pioneering writer, traveller and sometime friend of Alexander Pope who saved thousands of lives by introducing smallpox inoculation from Turkey to Europe.
Virginia Woolf’s time in Richmond is often seen by literary historians as a dark passage in
the life of the great feminist writer but was the 10 years spent in Richmond filled with despair and hatred of the town?