Wedding Photographer Syon Park — Robert Adam’s Ducal Interior, the Great Conservatory and the Thames Towpath
Syon Park in Brentford is one of London’s most significant surviving aristocratic estates and the only medieval seat of a duke remaining in the greater London area — the London residence of the Dukes of Northumberland since 1594, on the Thames’ north bank opposite Kew Gardens, whose Tudor exterior (the battlemented rectangular block of c.1547) conceals Robert Adam’s extraordinary sequence of six Neoclassical state rooms (created 1762–69 for the Duke of Northumberland) and whose 200-acre park by Capability Brown contains the Great Conservatory (Charles Fowler, 1820–27) — the world’s first large-scale metal and glass building and the direct prototype for the Crystal Palace of 1851. For Syon Park wedding photography, the Adam state rooms’ ante-room’s gilded Doric columns, the dining room’s apsed aisles and the conservatory’s curved glass dome provide portrait settings of Georgian Neoclassical interior of unmatched West London quality.
Robert Adam’s State Rooms, the Entrance Hall and the Ante-Room
Syon House’s Adam sequence — the entrance hall’s Roman atrium with its black and white marble floor and classical statues; the ante-room’s twelve gilded verde antique columns with the gilded entablature and the gold and white ceiling panel; the dining room’s apsed east end with the screened Corinthian columns and the plasterwork ceiling; the red drawing room’s crimson Spitalfields silk walls with Adam’s painted roundels — provide portrait backdrops of Georgian Neoclassical interior decoration of the most accomplished and refined type that England possesses. Each room provides a distinctly different colour and spatial portrait backdrop: the entrance hall’s austere grey and white, the ante-room’s gold and colour, the dining room’s apricot and the drawing room’s crimson together provide portrait variety within a single house visit.
The Great Conservatory, the Thames Towpath and Kew Gardens View
The Great Conservatory — Charles Fowler’s 1820–27 dome and wings built entirely of iron and glass above the central domed rotunda and the flanking curvilinear wings, anticipating the Crystal Palace by a quarter-century and still functioning as a plant house in the Syon estate garden — provides a portrait setting of early Victorian glass-and-iron horticultural architecture of genuine prototype historical significance. The Thames towpath at Syon’s river boundary — the GLA countryside access path along the Thames’ north bank where the Kew Gardens’ pagoda and the Temperate House are visible across the river to the south — provides riverside towpath portrait settings with the specific view of Georgian Kew across the Thames. The ornamental lake in Brown’s park and the London Butterfly House provide estate portrait destinations.