top of page

The other Gainsborough’s House

Later this week I’m launching A Right Royal Face-Off, my comic novel about Thomas Gainsborough, at Gainsborough’s House.

That’s the painter’s childhood home in Sudbury, Suffolk. It is now a gallery dedicated to his work and is currently undergoing an £8 million expansion to transform it into a national centre for the study and display of Gainsborough’s paintings and drawings.

The 18th-century parts of my novel are actually set in another of Gainsborough’s houses: the London town house in Pall Mall where he made his home from 1774 until his death in 1788.

It was the right-hand portion of a mansion called Schomberg House, which had been the residence of the third Duke of Schomberg, a Dutch general in the service of William III. He had built it on the site of the former home of Nell Gwynn, given to her by Charles II.

It was now owned by an artist called John Astley, who had come into a large fortune through marriage and bought the building for £5,000 in 1765. He spent a similar sum dividing it up, making his own home in the middle section (now number 81), with a harem on the upper floor.