There are plenty of spectacular historic houses on the London property market. There are considerably less with an astronomical observatory roof. The King's Observatory in Richmond has just come to market for £18 million, offering a rare glimpse inside one of the capital's most unusual historic residences.
Built for George III in 1769, the Grade I-listed building was originally designed as a place for the king to indulge his fascination with science. Today, after an extensive restoration, it is a private family home, one whose past remains unusually visible in almost every room.
Its story begins with the stars. George III commissioned the Scottish architect Sir William Chambers to design the observatory in the grounds of his nearby country residence. The building was completed in time for one of the great astronomical events of the 18th century: the transit of Venus across the sun on 3 June 1769. The king, Queen Charlotte and members of the observatory's scientific team gathered here to observe it.
The building's most distinctive feature is still its astronomical cupola, the rotating mechanism survives, allowing the dome to move so that a telescope can be aligned with the night sky. According to the observatory itself, it remains the oldest surviving telescope cupola of its kind in the world.
Its connection with meteorology also gives the house a surprisingly cinematic chapter. In 1939, meteorologist James Martin Stagg became one of the observatory's superintendents before serving as chief meteorological adviser to General Eisenhower during the Second World War. His weather forecasts were instrumental in determining when the Allied forces would launch the D-Day invasion.
That history has gained a fresh cultural resonance with Andrew Scott's portrayal of Stagg in Pressure, the new film centred on the meteorological decisions behind D-Day. Yet it is the building's more recent transformation that makes it particularly intriguing from an interiors perspective.
After decades of institutional use, rather unexpectedly, used as headquarters of Auto glass for a period, the observatory was eventually returned to residential use. Planning permission was granted in 2014 for it to become a single-family home. The restoration has deliberately resisted the temptation to make the house feel like a conventional luxury property. Instead, its unusual proportions and remnants of its scientific life have been retained.
The two principal octagonal rooms, for example, still contain the glass cabinets originally made for George III's collections of scientific instruments, natural-history specimens and clocks. Elsewhere, the building's later history has been layered over its Georgian bones, creating rooms that feel as much like a collector's house as a formal country residence.
There is an especially unexpected decorative thread running through the interiors, too. The current owner, Robbie Brothers, has a longstanding connection to Hong Kong and his collection of Asian art and ceramics has become part of the house. One of the principal rooms is hung with Chinese-inspired decoration, while Ming and Tang pieces sit alongside the Georgian architecture.
It is this mixture that gives the observatory its charm, rather than attempting to return it to a pristine 1769 version of itself, the restoration allows the building's different lives to coexist. A building that is simultaneously a royal retreat, scientific institution, meteorological workplace and, now, private home.
The grounds have undergone a similarly thoughtful transformation. The observatory sits within Old Deer Park, in a landscape historically associated with Capability Brown. A later landscaping project sought to restore some of the historic views around the building, while the more recent gardens include a lake and a Portland stone boathouse.
Perhaps that is the appeal of the King's Observatory as not just a historical house but a modern day home. For £18 million, its next owner will therefore be buying something considerably rarer than a historic London house: a home whose original purpose was quite literally to look at the sky.
In a time when the ultimate property fantasy increasingly seems to be a house with a swimming pool, cinema and modernised spa, there is something rather refreshing about a home whose most impressive amenity is still the ability to open its roof and look at the stars.
