The
small village of Heston lay ten and one half miles from London and about
one and a half miles north of the western road. The soil about the village,
a strong loam, was particularly good for growing wheat, and it is said
Queen Elizabeth I preferred her royal table to be set with bread made
from Heston wheat. The hamlet of Heston was, in medieval times, a part
of the manor of Isleworth which belonged to Edmund, earl of Cornwall.
By the late eighteenth century Heston was the property, in trustees,
of Lady Sarah Child.
Osterley
House, the seat of the Child family, stood one and a half to the east
of the village. Sir Thomas Gresham first built the house in 1577. The
principal parts of this structure were demolished in 1760 by Francis
Child who then built the house as it appears above. In the Regency period
the house was the seat of the Earl of Jersey. The house was surrounded
by extensive gardens, which in the eighteenth century housed a menagerie
of exotic birds.
