The Rosary and Hollies in Ormond Road, are two of the oldest surviving privately owned houses in Richmond. Built around 1697 when William and Mary were on the throne.
Nathaniel Rawlins a Haberdasher and London Merchant built them for his daughters so that they could live back-to-back and near to his own home, Clarence House, in The Vineyard. They both married before they were finished and so never actually lived in them.
Ormond Place is inscribed on a stone tablet inset in the bricks. Whether this relates to a bigger development planned by Rawlins I haven’t yet found out but these houses are definitely a secret treasure to discover in Richmond. The gate posts to the left lead to the hidden Ormond Avenue, a small road comprising of eight houses built in the garden of the Rosary in the 1890s.
Intriguingly, I have also discovered that arches of the Rosary’s cellar are medieval and suggest a much older building stood here before these. There are also blocked entrances to passageways, similar to others reported to be in many of the older Richmond buildings.
References
Richmond, from Kew Green to Ham Common by Kathleen Courlander
Richmond Past, John Cloake
