The Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich is damaged in a fire

Elizabeth, Countess of Pembroke, rents Hill Lodge (formerly the mole catcher’s cottage) from Thomas Hill, the gamekeeper of Richmond Park.

Six days of riot in London are triggered by Lord George Gordon leading a march to oppose any degree of Catholic emancipation

The Taylor family inherit the manor of East Sheen and West Hall, and move into Brick Farm

George III makes the 'Dutch house' in Kew Gardens the private home for his family.

The English actress Sarah Siddons, already well known in the province, causes a sensation when she appears in London at Drury Lane

The first mail coach leaves Bristol for London, introducing a new era of faster transport

The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade is founded in London, with a strong Quaker influence

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) is buried in St Anne's churchyard in Kew.

Robert Tunstall builds a replacement stone bridge at Kew, designed by James Paine. It is opened by King George III driving over ‘with a great concourse of carriages’

Joseph Haydn sets off for England, where impresario Johann Peter Salomon presents his London symphonies

After centuries as a chapel of Kingston, and 22 years in which it shared a parish with Kew, St Peter’s is established as a parish in its own right.

London's Albion Mills burn

Lord Buckingham dies and the Marble Hill estate passes to Lady Suffolk's great niece Henrietta Hotham. She lives in the house briefly and then rents it out, living some of the time in Little Marble Hill, a house built in the grounds.

York House has various owners and tenants, being bought by Count, later Prince, Starhemberg, Austrian Ambassador who instals a private chapel.

Horace Walpole dies and the Strawberry Hill estate is left to his niece, Anne Seymour Damer, a well-known sculptress, for her lifetime.

The king's son, William, Duke of Clarence, becomes Keeper (or Ranger) of Bushy Park and establishes his mistress, the actress Dora Jordan, in Bushy House

George Gostling II inherits Whitton Park and commisions Humphrey Repton to landscape the grounds.

Captain George Vancouver, who discovered Vancouver Island and retired to live in Petersham, is buried in St Peter’s

Dora gives birth in Bushy House to Mary, the first of seven children of the Duke of Clarence to be born in the house in the following nine years

The Queen’s Head pub is built in the orchard of John Dee’s house

Telford proposes a bold new London Bridge

Italian physicist Alessandro Volta describes to the Royal Society in London how his 'pile' of discs can produce electric current

The family of John Henry Newman (later Cardinal Newman) move to Grove House (now Grey Court House), where they stay for five years

King George III has the White House at Kew demolished and instructs James Wyatt to build a castellated palace by the river, which was never completed.