Footpath along the edge of Osterley Park

Image: © Marathon Taken: 16 Jul 2014

Osterley Park and its surrounding gardens, park and farmland is one of the last surviving country estates in London. In 1565, Sir Thomas Gresham, financier and adviser to Elizabeth I, built a house here in a very similar location to the one today. In 1713, the Osterley estate was acquired by the Child family and in the 1760s they commissioned Robert Adam to remodel it. The Childs were a banking family with a house in central London, and they used Osterley as a country villa for entertaining. When the heiress Sarah Sophia Child married the 5th Earl of Jersey in 1804, the family moved to the Jersey estate at Middleton Park in Oxfordshire. Osterley remained in the Jersey family ownership until the Ninth Earl of Jersey gave it to the National Trust in 1949. Apart from the more formal ground and lake surrounding the house, there are a number of footpaths through the surrounding parkland as seen here. The back gardens of the houses in Jersey Road are to the left. Walking routes are only accessible during the Park's opening times which are winter 8 - 6pm and summer 8 - 7.30pm.

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