The house contains details from the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian eras. The rooms include the hall, the parlour (thought to have once been the original kitchen), the lower kitchen, the porch room, the Roy Smith art gallery (once a wash room or scullery), the Harriet Killick dressing room and the bedroom. One room has a display about Nonsuch Palace, built nearby by King Henry VIII and pulled down in the 1680s. In the garden there is a medieval well which served an earlier building on the site.[3]
History
It is said once to have been called "The Council House," owing to its use by Queen Elizabeth I, for holding an impromptu council meeting for signing papers while on a hunting expedition from Nonsuch Palace.[4]
The oldest private school in the country, The Cheam School, was founded at Whitehall in Cheam in 1645.[5]
Ownership
It is believed that the house was the residence of the merchant, lawyer and philosopher, James Boevey (1622–1696), from c. 1670 to his death.[6]
The house was bought by the borough in 1963 and following restoration, it was opened to the public as a historic building in 1978, and is run by the London Borough of Sutton and the Friends of Whitehall.[8]
The museum closed in 2016 for a £1.6m refurbishment of the building. It reopened in June 2018 with improved facilities.[9] Jill Whitehead, chair of the council's environment and neighbourhood committee, said: "The redevelopment of the Whitehall Museum is of major significance to the borough as it is one of our oldest and most historic buildings."[10]
^Crawley-Boevey, A. W. C., The Perverse Widow, Being Passages from the Life of Catharina, Wife of William Boevey, 1898. Biography of James Boevey, pp. 24–38
^MacGregor, David R. (1986). The China Bird: The History of Captain Killick, and the Firm He Founded, Killick Martin & Company. Conway Maritime Press Limited. ISBN0-85177-381-8.
.jpg)
