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Lord Helson at
Merton Place |
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| In 1801 Lord Nelson returned
from the Baltic, where he had won the Battle of
Copenhagen, and, having previously separated from
his wife, decided he wanted ‘a small neat
house from six to ten miles of
London’ where he could live with his friends
Sir William and Lady Hamilton. On his behalf Emma
went to Merton, a village with a church, some one
hundred and fifty houses and cottages and about
eight hundred people. There she found Merton
Place, originally a little seventeenth-century
farm in the eastern outskirts of the village on
the old Merton Priory estate, the entrance gates
of which were on the site of the present Nelson
Arms. She built on an extra wing to make it an imposing two-storeyed, bay-windowed, double-fronted building with a drawing room, dining room, library, five bedrooms and eight servants rooms. A branch of the River Wandle (now filled in) supplied it with a moat, which she described as ‘the Nile’ in honour of Nelson’s victory of 1798. In its gardens was an ornamental mound, which Nelson called the Quarter Deck, and the flagstaff of L’Orient, the great French warship that he had destroyed. There was great excitement in Merton when it was known that the renowned naval hero was to live there. Sir William warned him to travel by night and reach the house before dawn to avoid a noisy reception from the welcoming parishioners, who were prepared to remove the horses from his carriage and drag him to the village. For Nelson the place was ‘Paradise Merton’. It was the first English home he had ever had. He enjoyed himself with ‘gardening, attending the House (of Lords), eating and drinking and hurra-ing’. He had told Emma, ‘I am very anxious to have a home where my friends may be welcome’, and he was visited by many of them, including Thomas Hardy his flag-captain who was to tend him as he lay dying on board the Victory at Trafalgar. Emma too enjoyed her position as hostess. She was lavish in entertaining, spending extravagantly her own money ant that of Nelson, who had to meet his debts by selling diamonds presented to him by foreign sovereigns. On most days, a dozen guests were invited to dinner and often stayed overnight. Merton Place no longer exists, and we must turn to St. Mary’s Church to see an important aspect of that brief, generous period of happiness. |
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