Pitzhanger Manor

#103

Sir John Soane’s west-London showpiece: a compact country retreat where he tested the tricks that made his name—top light, shallow domes, witty perspective, and rooms that feel larger than their walls. Today it pairs a restored Georgian interior with rotating contemporary art, so you see Soane’s ideas bounce off living artists.

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Opening Hours

Sunday: 10:00 – 17:00

Wednesday: 10:00 – 17:00

Thursday: 10:00 – 17:00

Friday: 10:00 – 17:00

Saturday: 10:00 – 17:00

Admissions

Adult £12.00

Child £6.00

What's not to miss inside?

Soane’s Light Experiments

Prototype moves later perfected at Dulwich and Lincoln’s Inn Fields

Clerestories and shallow domes wash walls with daylight so paintings glow without glare.

Stand with your back to a window and clock how the ceiling, not the sash, does most of the lighting work.

📍 Gallery rooms and stair hall

Country House, Urban Park

Architecture designed as a viewfinder

Framed vistas turn the lawn into a ‘room’ beyond the threshold—Soane designs your gaze, not just the house.

Pick a doorway and list three things it deliberately reveals—and three it hides.

📍 South front onto Walpole Park

Contemporary Dialogues

Old shell, new ideas

About five exhibitions a year riff on Soane’s obsessions—light, memory, illusion, craft.

Choose one artwork and one room detail that ‘talk’ to each other; write the one-sentence connection.

📍 Temporary exhibition spaces

🤓 Fun Facts

From 1901 the manor served as Ealing’s public library—Soane’s house became a book stack before its modern restoration.

Soane sold Pitzhanger in 1810, barely five years after completing it; the house is both manifesto and brief fling.

Top-lit rooms here prefigure the lighting strategy that made Dulwich Picture Gallery a model for later museums.

Similar Museums

Historic house

Eltham Palace

Weekend Fun

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