The Dairy, Kenwood House

Overlooking London’s Hampstead Heath since the early 17th century, Kenwood House was transformed in the 18th century into a grand neoclassical villa. Now restored to its Georgian splendour, Kenwood is home to a world-famous art collection.

Between 1794 and 1796, George Saunders, the architect employed by the 2nd Earl of Mansfield to expand the house, built an ornamental dairy in the landscape for the Earl’s wife, Louisa, Countess of Mansfield. Tending a dairy was a fashionable hobby for aristocratic women in this period, following the example of the French queen Marie Antoinette.

Formed of three pavilions in the mode of a Swiss chalet, the dairy at Kenwood was designed as an elegant place where the Countess could entertain friends and visitors and even includes an ornate octagonal room where Louisa and her guests could take tea. Such ornamental dairies were still functional, and the one at Kenwood would have supplied the house with butter, milk and cream, while ice was stored in the ice-house below. The central pavilion was home to the dairy maid.