Danson House

Danson House is a Georgian mansion (today a Grade I listed building) at the centre of Danson Park, in Welling in the London Borough of Bexley, south-east London.

The earliest reference to the Danson Estates can be found in an Archbishop's survey of 1284, in which seven of the Archbishop's tenants are cited as owning 17 acres of land at "Densynton". The Manor of Bexley was acquired by Henry VIII, and remained a part of the royal estates until James I sold it to John Spielman in an attempt to raise funds for the crown. On 1 March 1622 the Manor was bought by William Camden, who immediately granted it to Oxford University to fund a chair in History. In 1695 the estates were sold into private hands for the first time as an owner-occupied property.

In 1699 John Styleman, a director of the British East India Company, took up residence at Danson, the estates having been acquired on his behalf by his brother Francis two years earlier. Styleman began to develop the estates as a country seat, but left Danson shortly after the death of his wife Arabella at the property in 1717. In 1723 Styleman leased the property for 99 years to John Selwyn MP, a royal courtier, who improved and enlarged the estates a great deal before his death in 1751. The estate at this point included a mansion with five bedrooms, four living rooms, a nursery, kitchen and brewhouse, as well as an icehouse, elaborate water features, and an ornamental Chinese-style house.

John Styleman had died in 1734, his will stipulating that half the proceeds from the lease should go to his widow, Mary Styleman, and the other half to charities providing almhouses for 12 poor families in Bexley. On 10 July 1753 Selwyn's widow, also Mary, sub-let the property to Sir John Boyd, sugar merchant and vice-chairman of the British East India Company, and son of the St Kitts planter and slaveholder Augustus Boyd. By 1759 Boyd had taken over the lease and bought out the rest of the land added to the estates by Selwyn. However, he still had to pay £100 annuity to the charity established by Styleman's will, which owned half of the freehold. His offer of a permanent annuity in return for the charity's half of the freehold required an Act of Parliament, and as a result the Styleman Act was passed in 1762, and John Boyd thus became the sole owner of the entire estates, paving the way for extensive enlargement of the property and the construction of Danson House as it stands today.

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