Ranger’s House is a medium-sized red brick Georgian mansion in the Palladian style, adjacent to Greenwich Park in the south east of London. It is situated in Blackheath and backs directly onto Greenwich Park. Previously known as Chesterfield House, its current name is associated with the Ranger of Greenwich Park, a royal appointment; the house was the Ranger’s official residence for most of the 19th century. There is a rose garden behind it, and since 2002 it has housed the Wernher Collection of art.
The house, probably dating from 1722?23, was originally built for Capt., later Vice-Admiral, Francis Hosier (1673?1727) on wasteland adjacent to Greenwich Park, probably with John James as architect. The house then had a superb view and easy access to London by road and river. Hosier had made his fortune through trade at sea and both the ship he served on as a lieutenant and his own ship were called the Neptune. He occupied the house until dying of yellow fever at sea in 1727, during the disastrous Blockade of Porto Bello off Panama.
In 1748 the lease of the house was inherited by the 4th Earl of Chesterfield. He was a politician, diplomat, man of letters and wit who eventually became Secretary of State. He added the splendid bow windowed gallery for entertaining and displaying his art treasures. Chesterfield wrote that the view from the gallery gave him “three different, and the finest, prospects in the world”.
In 1782, the next purchaser was Richard Hulse (1727?1805), 2nd son of Sir Edward Hulse, 1st Bt., physician to George II and Elizabeth Levett. He was High Sheriff of Kent in 1768 and a JP. He held the office of Deputy Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company between 1799 and 1805. He lived at sometime at Baldwins, Kent, and died unmarried without progeny. Hulse added a room with a bow window on the north side to balance Chesterfield’s gallery and this is how the house appears today.