Chiswick House

During his trip to Italy in 1719, Burlington had acquired a passion for Palladian architecture. He had not closely inspected Roman ruins or made detailed drawings on the sites in Italy; he relied on Palladio and Scamozzi as his interpreters of the classic tradition. Another source of his inspiration were drawings he collected, including those of Palladio himself, which had belonged to Inigo Jones and his pupil John Webb. According to Howard Colvin, "Burlington's mission was to reinstate in Augustan England the canons of Roman architecture as described by Vitruvius, exemplified by its surviving remains, and practised by Palladio, Scamozzi and Jones."

After Burlington's death in 1753, his wife, Lady Dorothy Savile, and daughter, Charlotte, who had married William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire in 1748, inherited the house. Charlotte died in December 1754, and Lady Burlington died in September 1758. Several views of Burlington's house were made by the architect-draughtsman John Donowell around this time.

After the death of Lady Burlington in 1758, the villa and gardens passed to the Cavendish family. William Cavendish died in 1764, leaving the property to his son William, the 5th Duke of Devonshire. In 1774, William married Lady Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire, who enjoyed spending time at Chiswick which she referred to as her "earthly paradise". She regularly invited members of the Whig party to the house for tea parties in the garden. In 1788 the Cavendish family demolished the Jacobean house and hired architect John White to add two wings to the villa to increase the amount of accommodation. The duchess was responsible for the building of the Classical Bridge in 1774, designed by the architect James Wyatt, and the planting of roses on the walls of the new wings and the sides of the buildings. She died in 1806.

In 1813, a 300 feet (91 m) conservatory was built by Samuel Ware, with the purpose of housing exotic fruits and camellias. Gardener Lewis Kennedy built an Italian inspired geometric garden around the conservatory. In 1827, after a rapid decline in health, Tory Prime Minister George Canning died in the same room where Charles James Fox had died in 1806.

Between 1862 and 1892 the villa was rented by the Cavendish family to a number of successive tenants, including the Duchess of Sutherland in 1867, the Prince of Wales in the 1870s, and John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, patron of the architect William Burges, from 1881 to 1892.

From 1892, the 9th Duke of Devonshire rented the villa to Doctors Thomas Seymour and Charles Molesworth Tuke (sons of Thomas Harrington Tuke), and it was used by them as a mental hospital, the Chiswick Asylum, for wealthy male and female patients until 1928. The asylum was praised for its relatively compassionate approach to its inmates. The wings of the house used for the asylum were demolished in the 1950s so little now remains of this use, except in archival records. In 1897, the two sphinxes on the main gate were removed to Green Park during the celebrations of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. They were never returned.

Hounslow Council and English Heritage formed the Chiswick House and Gardens Trust in 2005 to unify the management of the villa and gardens. The trust took over the administration for the villa and gardens in July 2010, following the completion of the restoration works. A Heritage Lottery Fund Grant was complemented by approximately £4 million from other sources, for restoration of the gardens in 2007. The garden is open to the public from dawn until dusk without charge.