One
of the "most conspicuous ornaments" of Middlesex, Syon House
stood in pleasant pleasure-gardens on the Thames between Old Brentford
and Isleworth.
The name derived from a local medieval convent (founded in 1414 by Henry
V), which was itself named after Mount Sion. After the mid-sixteenth
century dissolution
of the monasteries the convent was handed to Edward Seymour, Duke
of Somerset, who then build this house on the ruins of the convent.
The estate later passed to the Dukes of Northumberland during Queen
Elizabeth’s reign before it passed back into the Earls of Somerset’s
hands in 1692, and then back into the Dukes of Northumberland’s
possession in the mid-18th century.
The
house was of magnificent proportions, composed of stone, and built in
a quadrangular form.
