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Danson House is a Palladian mansion and a Grade I listed building at the centre of Danson Park, in Welling in the London Borough of Bexley, south-east London.
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.
Originally called Danson Hill, the Palladian villa was designed by leading architect Sir Robert Taylor (architect of the Bank of England), and constructed to the north of the older mansion. Work began on the house in 1763, and Boyd moved into the house around 1768 with his new wife Catherine. By the time of Boyd's death in 1800 it stood in the centre of over 600 acres (2.4km2) of pleasure grounds and agricultural estate – over 200 acres (0.8km2) of which today form Danson Park, the second largest public park in the London Borough of Bexley. Internal furnishings and decorations, including ornate chimney-pieces, were designed by William Chambers, a friend of Boyd's, and murals and paintings were produced for the house by artists such as Richard Wilson and Richard Corbould.
The landscape was designed and laid out from 1761 to 1763, by either Capability Brown or his assistant Nathaniel Richmond. At its centre is a large and picturesque 12-acre (49,000 m2) lake to the south of the house, on the site of the previous mansion, described by Edward Hasted in his History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent of 1797 as "a most magnificent sheet of water so contrived as to seem a beautiful serpentine river, flowing through the grounds". A small house with a spire, named Chapel House, was constructed to the south of Danson House, which has now been separated from the rest of the park by a motorway, but can still be seen today near the roundabout at Blendon.
When the house was acquired by English Heritage in 1995, it was in a dangerously dilapidated condition, having been used for a number of purposes since 1923, including council offices up until the 1970s, and was described by English Heritage as "the most significant building at risk in London". It was painstakingly restored in a ten-year £4.5m project by Purcell Miller Tritton architects. Bexley Heritage Trust, a local heritage charity, was involved in partnership with English Heritage from 2000 and completed the interior furnishing and fitting-out of the house prior to its reopening by Queen Elizabeth II in Spring 2005. The Danson Park grounds were also restored, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, in 2006. In 2016, the borough cancelled its grant to the Bexley Heritage Trust for the upkeep of the property, and the charity therefore withdrew to focus on Hall Place, and the house fell under direct management from the borough. The council has subsequently made Danson House the register office for Bexley Borough.
The house is now owned by English Heritage on a 999-year lease from 1997, and will eventually be managed by a trust. It is open to the public on selected viewing days. The estate's stable block is now a public house, the Danson Stables.
The house was used as a filming location for the 2017 historical TV drama Taboo, starring Tom Hardy.
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