Marble Hill is a beautiful property that sits in the heart

of the local community.

It has been completely transformed in the last number

of years with kind funding

from the National Lottery Heritage Fund,

the National Lottery Community Fund,

and English Heritage.

We've invested 8 million pound into both the park

and the house.

We've completely restored the house itself,

creating a new visitor experience

with beautiful interpretation for families to enjoy

within the landscape itself and across the park.

All the facilities have been upgraded.

We've got fantastic gardens for visitors to enjoy,

from the wildflower meadows to the ice house quarter

and the nine pin alley.

There's so much for visitors to enjoy today.

When Henrietta embarked on building this house

and the garden in which it sits in 1724, she had been

on what we might call today, a bit of a journey.

She was orphaned as a child

and she then made a disastrous marriage to Charles Howard.

A man who was a gambler, a drinker,

who spent all her money

and then when things got really difficult was violent

and abusive to her.

Henrietta was determined to find a way

out of this poverty and a way out of this situation.

She was a popular courtier with a gift for friendship

and she became the mistress of the Prince of Wales

who was to become George II.

And it was really through this

that she was able to afford to build this house.

George II gave her a gift

of furniture, cash, stocks and shares,

which enabled her to fund the building of Marble Hill.

And importantly, he helped protect this gift

from her estranged husband, Charles Howard.

The house is designed in a Neo Palladian style.

This is a classical style,

harking back to the ancient world of Rome.

English Heritage has managed the house

and the estate since 1986.

It's been in the public domain

since the early 20th century

and the gardens around the house are a public park

well loved by the local community.

But in recent years, not much had been invested here

and the park was becoming tired.

The sports facilities, the woodland areas needed attention

and the house itself was damp

and often closed to the public.

So we felt it was time to do something about that,

to restore the house to the glory of its days

as Henrietta's home, and also to open up the gardens,

recreate the core of the 18th century gardens

she would've known it and improve

and enhance all the sports facilities

and public amenities for the general public.

Over the last few years,

we've been transforming the garden here at Marble Hill.

And part of that has been making sure we open

up these Woodland areas.

These were completely inaccessible five years ago

and these are areas which we've taken back

to that historic design from the mid 18th century.

We've done some brilliant work in making sure

that we put nature conservation

and biodiversity at the heart of this project.

So that involves things like wildflower meadows,

planting over 350 trees

and making sure that we leave some

of our grassland to make sure it has much more benefits

for pollinators and other wildlife.

None of this would've been possible

without our really hardworking group of garden volunteers.

And they've spent hours and hours planting all

of the plants that you can see at Marble Hill today.

And that's brought it together to make this garden

look really beautiful.

This project has been about people and about the community

and it's great to be able to celebrate them

through Marble Hill Revived, whether that be

through our apprentice programme,

where we've invested in people

to be able to give them opportunities to learn

and to explore their full potential,

or whether that's to working with our fantastic volunteers.

In 2019 we didn't have any volunteers here,

but now we have 240 who bring their brilliant talents

to help us with our research, to help us with our gardens,

and also to help us with our events and now the house.

And it's such a joy to work and be with them.

We've done a huge amount of work

at Marble Hill to make it what it is today.

We are in the dining parlour

and the wallpaper was put up in the early 2000s

and remarkably it has kept its colors.

And this is something that is very important to us,

that we keep the colours because once they fade,

you can't get the colours back.

And the way we do that is by putting blinds on the windows

just to keep the light levels down.

We put UV film onto the window panes,

and that again is a way of stopping the damaging effects

of light onto the wallpaper.

Using the environmental monitoring system

together with the building management system,

we can make sure that all the rooms are at a stable level

which best protects the collection.

And my role is to care for the collection.

And the idea is to have this collection

for everybody to enjoy,

but also for your children

and your children's children to enjoy too.

So we are very much looking long term, and that is the role

of a conservator is to conserve our beautiful heritage.

I'm in the great room at Marble Hill.

This was the room where Henrietta Howard

entertained her guests.

To get to the great room,

you climb a spectacular mahogany staircase

and arrive in a high ceilinged room

with wonderful views of the garden

and the river to the south.

And this is a room where we have been able to bring together

a few of the objects that actually belonged to Henrietta.

When she died, she had stipulated that her collections

should be kept together.

She didn't want them dispersed or sold,

but that's sadly not what happened.

Almost every item that had been in the house

when she lived here, disappeared from the house.

There are a few items now, though, in this room

which we can show you.

The interior of the great room at Marble Hill

is distinguished by its symmetry.

And that's an important element

in the neoclassical architectural design

that Henrietta wanted to achieve here.

In this room, there were originally four peer tables

of which only one now survives.

The table until recently was gilded

and when we began a conservation project on it,

we undertook some paint analysis

and discovered that originally the table had been not gold

but a colour closer to white.

We have reproduced its original colour,

and we also commissioned a replica table to sit alongside it

to restore some of that symmetry to the room.

This is a lacquered screen,

a folding screen which you could move around the room.

And I think it was probably used to exclude drafts

or to kind of create a slightly smaller space to sit in

and it's lacquered with Chinese design on it.

And we know it was Henrietta's,

because it has on the corner her coat of arms.

Among the paintings in the great room are five

which we know where here in Henrietta's day.

They are slightly fanciful collections

of famous Roman ruins and temples.

So this was a way that she could experience the sights

of Rome without actually visiting

and is very much in keeping with her desire

to recreate a little bit of ancient Rome

here in Twickenham.

It's been great to be able to celebrate many parts

of the project, but also to celebrate the history

and using the story of Henrietta to inspire

and in some cases, change people's lives.

Working with people who have been victims

of domestic abuse has been a real joy,

for them to find togetherness

and to express their feelings through art, through nature.

And also through planting a tree

that they've named the Henrietta tree of hope.

Our other project has been working to explore Henrietta

as a woman of disability.

She went partially deaf at age 30.

So within the house

there is now a soundscape that has been created

by deaf charities and also deaf musicians

to be able to share about her disability,

but also to think about

what it would be like 300 years ago

to be able to hear or not to hear

as the case may be.

Inside the house, there is this hearing horn

and that soundscape sits there as testament

to the work that we've done with the community.

You're welcome to enjoy the home of Henrietta Howard.

When you walk through the door,

you're going to feel what it was like

during her life in Georgian England.

We've got a fantastic family trail

for people to enjoy and explore the park and the landscape

and also the house as well,

as well as the play facilities,

the sports fields and the new cafe.

You're welcome to come and enjoy Marble Hill.

(gentle music fading)