Surrey House, London, England

Surrey House, (7, Marble Arch West) on the corner of Oxford Street and Edgware Road, was from 1879, the London residence leased by Lord and Lady Battersea.

In 1877, Cyril Flower (1843-1907) married Constance, (1843-1931) daughter of Sir Anthony de Rothschild, whom he met in 1864 through his friendship with her cousin, Leopold de Rothschild.

Like his father, Flower was a property developer, and in 1880, he entered Parliament for Brecon, a seat he held until 1885 when the constituency was abolished, and then represented Luton until 1892. He served briefly as a Junior Lord of the Treasury from February to July 1886 in the third Liberal administration of Gladstone, with whom he was a great favourite. It was Gladstone, who, in 1892, raised him to the peerage as Baron Battersea of Battersea in the County of London and of Overstrand in the County of Norfolk.

Apart from his property development and political career he was also a great collector and patron of art, and Lord Battesea transformed Surrey House. He had the hall and dining room lined with marble that came from a church in Brescia, while another hall was lined with seventeenth century carved oak from Holland. His bedroom at Surrey House was one of the few London interiors completed by the Italian decorator Carlo Bugatti whose designs reflected Moorish, Islamic and Japanese influences.

Lord Battersea was a patron of James McNeill Whistler and was involved with the Pre-Raphaelite set; as a young boy he had been the model for Jesus in Holman Hunt's painting The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple. One of the most famous works owned by Lord and Lady Battersea was The Golden Stairs by Burne-Jones, which Cyril, a patron of Burne-Jones commissioned in 1880 for Surrey House. The Batterseas had no children, and in 1907, Lord Battersea bequeathed The Golden Stairs to the National Gallery with a life interest to Lady Battersea. She surrendered this interest in 1924 and presented the work through the National Art Collections Fund in order that it might be exhibited at the Tate Gallery.

Cyril Flower, Lord Battersea died in 1907. His widow Constance, retained Surrey House until 1909, when she leased 10, Connaught Place as her London home. 

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