A rite of social passage: Gunnersbury Park, 1835–1925, a Rothschild family villa

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn 1835 Nathan Rothschild purchased Gunnersbury Park. Set in only 75 acres, this Regency villa in Ealing, just outside London, was the antithesis of a landed estate. The house remained in the family until 1925. This article argues that the architecture, interior decoration, garden and social use of Gunnersbury Park, although consonant with villa tradition, were shaped by the choices of this Jewish mercantile family, instrumental in Rothschild self-fashioning and their pursuit of acceptance by the social elite. As Gunnersbury evolved to serve the changing needs of successive generations, it invited the outside world in, redefining the family through new interests in sport, the garden and collecting, all nurtured there. Remarkably this acculturation took place within, not outside the Jewish context, the ties of family and religion remaining vital influences. In tracing this social rite of passage, it emerges that by the twentieth century the Rothschilds, now enmeshed in upper-class society, defined themselves not simply as Jews but as British Jews. Gunnersbury Park, neglected in Rothschild historiography, facilitated this transformation while remaining a family home of lasting resonance for all who had known it.