For as long as there has been glass strong enough and clear enough to use in windows, there have been conservatories that have tried to take full advantage and provide a luscious garden experience indoors.
The first time that was possible outside of royalty and the obscenely wealthy was in the early 19th century, and as the industrial revolution helped to reduce the cost of both metal and glass, this initial surge heralded a golden age for traditional conservatory construction.
However, whilst many people started to buy into the conservatory boom thanks to great monuments such as Kew Gardens’ Great Palm House and the legendary Crystal Palace, at the time one of the biggest and most architecturally impressive glass structures, finding the first is difficult.
There are two possible answers, one which has a verified construction date, and one that may have been constructed earlier but with dating that has proven to be inconsistent.
Kenwood House
Initially constructed in 1616 as Caen Wood House, Kenwood House in Hampstead Heath is a popular cultural attraction in Greater London since it came under the ownership of English Heritage.
Alongside a lavish art gallery, the home has become a major part of English culture, with scenes from the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility having been filmed there, as well as a scene from Notting Hill.
Beyond its lavish architectural beauty and historical importance, it is also believed to be quite possibly the first conservatory constructed in the UK, with the primarily glass and brick structure believed to have been added in 1700, four years before owner William Bridges sold it off.
This in itself is a remarkable and historic achievement, but the success of this conservatory also affected the rest of the house.
After passing through many different hands over the following 50 years, it ended up in the possession of William Murray, a man who would become the Earl of Mansfield in 1776 and the man behind Lord Mansfield’s Rule of paternity in English Law.
Before all of this, he was focused on renovating Kenwood House, giving architect and designer Robert Adam free reign to redesign the historic home in any way he chose.
He chose to design an internal counterpoint for the beauty of the conservatory and in doing so developed the famous library of Kenwood, arguably the most famous work Mr Adam ever did.
Montacute House
Slightly earlier than this according to some historical accounts was the conservatory at the historic Montacute House, a home built at the tail end of the Elizabethan Age in the village of Montacute in South Somerset.
As the history of Montacute House is somewhat more fractured compared to Kenwood, confirming a date for the construction of its conservatory is somewhat tricky, given that several generations of the Phelips family that owned the land ended up imprisoned or insane.
Given that the home’s initial facade used a lot of windows, it would stand to reason that it could have had a glass-based conservatory earlier than this, and a historic garden structure does exist to this day.
However, whilst some have dated it as earlier than 1700, the BBC claim it was added in the 1840s, long after the conservatory golden age had already started.