Highlight Tours
Our expert volunteers offer Highlight Tours that introduce visitors to Kenwood, its history and inhabitants. You'll also hear about some of the highlights of the collection and the great masterpieces of the Iveagh Bequest.
The tours run on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 11.30am and 2.30pm and last approximately one hour. There’s no need to pre-book, turn up and pay on the day - £10 Adults/ £5 English Heritage Members (Children free).
Our volunteers will guide you round key highlights on the ground floor, including the Adam Library with its stunning neoclassical design, the Dining Room, home to a collection of Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings, and the Music Room, with paintings by Gainsborough and Reynolds.
Discover the Skeleton Table Clock by John Joseph Merlin. Made in 1776, it's one of the most unusual objects in Kenwood's collection as it has no outer casing, so the inner mechanism can be seen. It's one of the earliest skeleton table clocks to survive anywhere in the world.
In the Dining Room, learn more about the Dutch and Flemish masterpieces bequeathed to the nation by Lord Iveagh, including The Guitar Player by Johannes Vermeer, Pieter van den Broecke by Frans Hals and Self-Portrait with Two Circles, Rembrandt.
In the Music Room you will hear about Thomas Gainsborough’s painting of Mary, Countess Howe. It is one of Gainsborough’s most iconic portraits and only his third full-length portrait of a woman. On her father’s death, Countess Howe inherited his estates, and was therefore a landowner in her own right. This portrait helped to establish Gainsborough’s reputation as one of the greatest society portraitists of the age.