About

Rush Grove House - Terrace
Main entrance of the Rush Grove House

A Grade II listed manor house, Rush Grove House was originally built in 1816 and was once the residence for the Commander of the Royal Marine Barracks.

Now beautifully restored to its former Georgian glory, the house and private gardens have been transformed to offer a unique events space and filming location near London.

Side photo of main entrance

The history of Rush Grove House

Built for John Cook in 1816–17, Rush Grove House was originally called Regent Cottage. The house was enlarged in 1839, and in 1855 the Admiralty acquired Rush Grove House to replace Bowater Cottage as a residence for the colonel commandant of the Marine Barracks. Rush Grove House was the home of General Sir Anthony Blaxland Stransham, commandant of the Royal Marine barracks in nearby Frances Street, whose father raised the Union Flag on the Falklands in 1771, claiming formal possession of the islands for the United Kingdom.

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Lake view

The grounds and mews houses

Rush Grove House has access to a stunning private nature reserve set within three acres of landscaped grounds, featuring a private boating lake, Mulgrave Pond.

In the grounds to the south there is an octagonal summerhouse, featuring a slate roof and open-sided trellised timber arches. Adjacent and nearer the street there is a former stable and coach-house block - both buildings are older than Rush Grove House. The latter was built around 1805 with Rush Grove Cottage, which, until 1856, stood to the north of Rush Grove House.

From 1836 to 1855 Rush Grove Cottage housed Professor Barlow’s son, Peter William Barlow, with his young family. While living here the younger Barlow was the engineer responsible for bringing the railway to Woolwich. The summerhouse is of early nineteenth-century appearance but has undergone similar rebuilding like Rush Grove House. It once offered open views towards the Thames.

From 1869 the commanding officers of Cambridge Barracks occupied Rush Grove House. It was sold by the Army in 1986 and was temporarily renamed Deusi House after its then-owners before being named back to Rush Grove House when the Deusi family sold the house to Gary Halkyard, a London-based developer, and then to RGH Holdings, Inc., its present owner.

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Lake and front garden

Mulgrave Pond

Built in the early 1750s as a reservoir for the royal dockyard, Mulgrave Pond was later adapted to serve steam engines at the Arsenal and then became a popular spot with local anglers. The lake now forms part of the private Rush Grove House estate and is a secluded, two-acre, natural open space fringed by mature trees.

The name Mulgrave Pond came into use around 1804, when Mulgrave Place (now the south end of Rectory Place) was formed. This name probably honours Constantine John Phipps, Baron Mulgrave, a leading figure in the Admiralty whose son, Lt. Gen. Henry Phipps, later the first Earl of Mulgrave, came into cabinet in Pitt the Younger’s government of 1804.

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