page_title: Robert Grosvenor, 1st Marquess of Westminster
section_title: Development of the estate
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Grosvenor, 1st Marquess of Westminster / Development of the estate
caption_attribution_description: English: Painting of Eaton Hall, Cheshire, England, as designed by William Pordon in the late 17th century
context_page_description: Robert Grosvenor, 1st Marquess of Westminster, KG was the son of the 1st Earl Grosvenor, whom he succeeded in 1802 as 2nd Earl Grosvenor. He was created Marquess of Westminster in 1831. He was an English Member of Parliament and an ancestor of the modern-day Dukes of Westminster. Grosvenor continued to develop the family's London estates, he rebuilt their country house, Eaton Hall in Cheshire where he also restored the gardens, and built a new London home, Grosvenor House. He maintained and extended the family interests in the acquisition of works of art, and in horse racing and breeding racehorses.
context_section_description: Soon after Robert Grosvenor inherited the Eaton estate, he rebuilt the country house at Eaton Hall in Cheshire, and he also developed the London estate, creating the areas now known as Belgravia and Pimlico.  Eaton had become "an unfashionable and run-down estate". The existing country house had been built for his grandfather, Sir Thomas Grosvenor, 3rd Baronet and designed by William Samwell.  He appointed William Porden as architect, who had previously surveyed his London estate.  The original plan was for the new house to cost £10,000 (equivalent to £920,000 as of 2019), and for it to take two years to build.  In the event it took just under ten years and cost over £100,000 (equivalent to £6,570,000 as of 2019).  The previous house was encased and surrounded by "every possible permutation of the gothic style". It included turrets, pinnacles, arched windows, octagonal towers, and buttresses (both regular and flying).  Four new wings were added to the house. When the future Queen Victoria visited in 1832 at the age of 13, she wrote in her journal: "The house is magnificent".  However others described it as being "as extravagant and opulent as the very latest upholsterer-decorators could make it". It was described as "the most gaudy concern I ever saw" and "a vast pile of mongrel gothic which ... is a monument of wealth, ignorance and bad taste".
  To restore the gardens and grounds, Grosvenor employed John Webb, a pupil of William Emes, who had been the previous designer of the landscaping around the house. New terrace walls were created on the east side of the house.  Belgrave Avenue, the approach to the house from the west, was levelled and drained, and 130,000 trees were planted along it.  The paths along the approach, which was 1.75 miles (3 km) long, were made between 18 feet (5 m) and 20 feet (6 m) wide, so that they would be suitable for the use of carriages.  On the east side of the house a serpentine lake was created on the near side of the River Dee. By the 1820s formal garden beds were becoming fashionable and William Andrews Nesfield was employed to design formal parterres around the house.  He added more terracing, balustraded walls, and flower beds surrounded by box edging.
  For the London estate, Grosvenor created a "fashionable new residential quarter" near Buckingham House (later Buckingham Palace).  He appointed Thomas Cundy as architect and surveyor, and Thomas Cubitt as builder. The entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states: "This urban development was to make the Grosvenors one of the richest families in Britain".  He also bought more property in Cheshire, and elsewhere at Shaftesbury in Dorset, and Stockbridge in Hampshire. The family's London house had been in Millbank, but in 1806 Grosvenor bought a house in Upper Grosvenor Street and greatly extended it; this was to become Grosvenor House.  He added an art gallery to the Park Lane side of the house in 1827, and in 1843 built a new entrance in Upper Grosvenor Street consisting of a Doric screen between large pedimented gateways that separated a cour d'honneur from the street in the Parisian manner.
caption: Porden's Eaton Hall
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