A colourful heritage dating back three centuries
The name Cannizaro
has been associated with Wimbledon for nearly 180 years.
In 1830, Francis Platamone, Count St Antonio, succeeded to the dukedom of Cannizzaro in Sicily. Shown far left with a dance partner, he was leasing Warren House on the west side of Wimbledon Common at the time. While the Duke and Duchess (pictured left) also lived in Hanover Square, central London, Warren House and its parkland in what was then rural Surrey provided their country retreat.
Although a naturalised British citizen, the Duke couldn't resist the attractions of Italy and left England shortly afterwards to live with his mistress in Milan. Undaunted, his long-suffering wife Sophia prided herself on the title Duchess of Cannizzaro and when she died in 1841 the Wimbledon estate was recorded under a variation of that name. Apart from the spelling change, it has stuck ever since.
Today’s Cannizaro Park and its hotel hold few memories of the unhappy couple. The park’s most outstanding features either predate their turbulent marriage or were introduced long afterwards. The present Cannizaro House was rebuilt in 1900 after a devastating fire, extended in the 1920s, converted in the late 1940s, and transformed by Thistle Hotels in1987.
The name apart, about the only aspect linking what we see today with the Duchess was her passionate love of music and the tradition of regular recitals she introduced. Whether she would have approved is a moot point but since 1989, Cannizaro’s summer concert festival has taken place in what is now the Italian Garden!
That didn’t exist in her time but the kitchen garden where it now stands certainly did. Warren House was actually built in the early 1700s, a century before the Cannizzaros' day, and the kitchen garden served some of its most famous residents and guests from its 18th century heyday right through to the last private owners in the 1940s.
18th
century residents included
among others Thomas Walker, an intimate friend of Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert
Walpole; John Lyde-Brown, governor of the Bank of England, who accumulated a
classical sculpture collection of over 300 pieces which he sold to Empress Catherine the Great of Russia;
and Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville (left), Home
Secretary and First Lord of the Admiralty under Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger.
Dundas lived in Wimbledon from 1785 until 1806. In those years, Pitt himself was a frequent guest with his own set of rooms which he used as a restful alternative to Downing Street. King George III also breakfasted at Warren House on several occasions after military reviews on Wimbledon Common. William Wilberforce, the great slavery abolitionist, had lived nearby a few years earlier.
In short, the house had long been famous for its social gatherings by the time the future Duke and Duchess of Cannizzaro arrived in 1817.
Cannizaro’s reputation continued during the 19th century. A later premier under Queen Victoria, Lord Aberdeen, was among the distinguished residents. Visitors included British and foreign royalty and great writers - among them Lord Tennyson, Oscar Wilde and Henry James. The picture below (left) shows maintenance in the grounds during those times.
The 20th century too saw some notable visitors. A bust in what is now the Old Tennis Court area of Cannizaro Park recalls an especially significant guest at nearby Lincoln House on Parkside - the exiled Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. A refugee after the Italians invaded his country in 1935, he stayed with the local Seligman family and appears below (right) during a walk in the grounds of their home, a few minutes away from Cannizaro.
Today’s 34-acre Cannizaro Park owes some of its best features to Dundas and above all to Mr and Mrs E Kenneth Wilson (below left) who lived there from 1920 to 1947.
It was Dundas who planted Lady Jane’s Wood to celebrate his wedding to Lady Jane Hope in 1793. This is still the area around the glorious Azalea Dell today and some of the original beeches from his day survived as recently as the great storm of 1987.
Wimbledon's rural tranquillity helped Dundas find peace of mind despite a career that ended in corruption charges. His son, the second Viscount Melville, lived in the neighbouring Westside House until 1822, a neighbour of the future Cannizzaros.
The Wilsons' 20th century legacy to Cannizaro Park went much further than that of earlier residents. Director of the Ellerman and Wilson shipping line, Kenneth was a keen member of the Rhododendron Society and we largely have him to thank for the park’s greatest asset, its many rare trees and shrubs planted on the gravel subsoil and acid topsoil.
Later plantings and improvements enhanced the magnificent displays of rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias that have made Cannizaro one of London’s finest parks.
During World War 2 an unexploded 500lb bomb was found nearby. Although it demolished a building on landing, killing two people, it never actually exploded. Had it done so, much of Cannizaro might well have gone up too. Instead the bomb was found simply lying amid some Jerusalem artichokes.
The Wilsons’ daughter Hilary married the 5th Earl of Munster in 1928 and 20 years later, after her parents' deaths, she sold the entire estate to the then Wimbledon Borough Council for £40,000. Her husband, a politician descended from King William IV, later became Lord Lieutenant of Surrey. A talented pianist and patron of the arts, Hilary died in 1979.
Cannizaro House became a home for the elderly and Cannizaro Park opened to the public in 1949. Its magnificent plant and tree collection had been the subject of a major report by the curator of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. The Mayor of Wimbledon Alderman W. E. Hamlin said: "I doubt whether there exists so close to the centre of London and so accessible to millions of people, a public estate which combines in such a marked degree, both great natural beauty and such a unique collection of beautiful and unusual trees and shrubs."
The old boundaries changed slightly with the creation of Chester and Sycamore Roads and Beech Close in the early 1950s, largely on what had been the grounds of Westside House. However, Cannizaro Park retained its essential features, including the area known as the Keir Garden. Until 1932 this had belonged to The Keir, a large house on Common Westside which was bought by Kenneth Wilson, converted into flats, and re-sold while the garden was retained. It included the Guides Chapel by Camp Road, once home to a Catholic priest but now used as a cafe every summer by a local pack of Brownies.
Cannizaro
Park saw further significant improvements, first under Wimbledon Council and
from 1965 under Merton. In
the 1950s the old kitchen garden was partly occupied by glasshouses (left)
which produced floral displays for major municipal events throughout Wimbledon.
New features were added including the Water (or Wild) Garden, the Belvedere, the Herbaceous Border and Heather Garden. However, from the 1980s onwards funding for maintenance was drastically reduced and the last two have since disappeared again. The number of parks gardening personnel is now well below the level necessary to sustain the previous standard and more recently the Council has even abandoned the concept of "flagship parks" altogether, spreading its resources thinly across all the parks in the borough to the detriment of Cannizaro.
Nevertheless, Cannizaro Park still recalls a very different world when large gardens were treasured for their own sake rather than being seen simply as development plots. The Friends intend this to continue.
Look out for the full story of Cannizaro Park in the book scheduled for publication in 2009.