Sion House

The family's traditional central London residence had been Northumberland House, now demolished. The eclectic interior of Syon House was designed by the architect Robert Adam in the 1760s.HistorySyon House derives its name from Syon Abbey, a medieval monastery of the Bridgettine Order, founded in 1415 on a nearby site by King Henry V. The abbey moved to the site now occupied by Syon House in 1431. It was one of the wealthiest nunneries in the country and a local legend recites that the monks of Sheen had a ley tunnel running to the nunnery at Syon. In 1539, the abbey was closed by royal agents during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the monastic community was expelled.On the closure of the abbey on the dissolution of the monasteries Syon became the property of the Crown for a short time before long lease to the 1st Duke of Somerset, who had the site rebuilt as Syon House in the Italian Renaissance style before his death in 1552. In 1541 and part of the following year Henry VIII's fifth wife Catherine Howard faced her long imprisonment at Syon. In February 1542, the King's men took her to the Tower of London and executed her on charges of adultery. Five years later when King Henry VIII died, his coffin surmounted by jewelled effigy rested at Syon House for its one night rest before the procession reached his burial place in St George's Chapel, Windsor.

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