The Gazebo is in the garden of a house called The Grange on Crooms Hill in Greenwich, London. It was designed by Robert Hooke in 1672 for the then owner of the house Sir William Hooker, who had been Lord Mayor of London.

(A youthful) Patrick Baty sampling the gazebo ceiling

I was commissioned to carry out the paint analysis of the ceiling.

For a structure of its age it had been painted remarkably infrequently. My client reported that the ceiling was green when they bought the house in the 1970s. An examination of the stratigraphy confirmed this, but also showed that the ‘green’ had in fact started out as a blue.

A photomicrograph from the Gazebo ceiling showed five decorative schemes – the third was a discoloured blue and the last two date from 1970+




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