NELL GWYNN’S HOME

Evening Star, Issue 23208, 6 March 1939, Page 11

NELL GWYNN’S HOME

AN HISTORIC MANOR Aii historic manor house in Fulham, West London, which was once the home of Nell Gwynn, the orange girl mistress of Charles 11., is now being restored. In the garden a mulberry tree planted by Nell herself still regularly bears a heavy crop of delicious fruit. • . ■ , The manor house, built in Tudor times, long before Nell Gwyiui’s day, has changed much in its history of more than three centuries, but still in its original state is the handsome broad staircase up which Charles If. is said to have ridden on horseback for a bet. During the work of restoration no fewer than 16 coats of paint wore removed from the woodwork, on the stairs, and tho fine old panelling on the walls.

Still to he seen is the entrance to an underground passage from the cellar of the manor house that leads, they say, to Chelsea Hospital, two miles off. Charles built the hospital to satisfy a wish of Nell’s. The tunnel is now bricked up to step rats and sewer gases, but an old employee of the gas works remembers penetrating along it for three-quarters of a mile. When it was built and what it was used for remain unsolved mysteries. Flagstones on the floor of the cellar are slotted, apparently for lifting, but none has ever investigated this part of the mystery. Trace of an old blocked up doorway suggests that once a stairway led from the dining room to the cellar.

It may have been built for a quick get-away. A less romantic explanation is that it was a short cut to the wine cellar.

The history of the manor goes back to the time of King Edward V.