No. 6
Architects, Fitzroy Robinson and Partners, 1959–60
On 24 June 1673 the Earl of St. Albans made
an agreement with Abraham Storey, the mason
and builder, whereby Storey was to erect 'a Great
building' on the site of No. 6. On the same date as
the 'assurance' of the site of No. 5 to George
Clisby, 1–2 April 1675, the Earl and his trustees
sold the leasehold interest in No. 6 to Storey and
the freehold interest to Thomas Fellows of Islington, gentleman, and William Hamond, citizen
and freemason of London, in trust for Storey.
The same ground-rent, of £15 8s. 4d. per annum,
was reserved as at No. 5. (ref. 131) By August 1676
Storey had built a house which he mortgaged for
£1200. (ref. 132) On 25–26 June 1677 he sold the
house and site for £5100 to John Hervey,
treasurer of the household to Queen Catherine of
Braganza, (ref. 133) who was already concerned in the
area as one of the trustees for the leasehold interest
of his kinsman St. Albans. Hervey's descendants
retained the property until its sale to the owner of
No. 5 in 1955, at which time their tenure had
lasted longer than that of any other owner in the
square.
The purchase in 1677 was carried through on
Hervey's behalf by Robert Hooke, who was also
concerned in the sale of the adjacent house, No. 7.
In January 1676/7 Hooke viewed the 'new house'
with Storey and also looked at the other newly
built houses in the square. In March, after a number of meetings, Hooke negotiated the purchase
and in April drew up drafts for the sale. After
this was concluded he was presented with fifty
guineas by Hervey, probably for his services here,
although he also worked for Hervey at his property
in the Strand, where he designed five houses for
him. Hooke perhaps had a hand in finishing the
house in the square: in May he 'directed about the
stairs down into the cellers' and in August was 'at
Mr. Harvey's about his Library'. (ref. 134)
Hervey occupied the house for less than two
years, until his death without issue in 1679/80
when it passed to his widow. (ref. 135) From 1683 to
1695 the house was evidently let, first to Lord
Dartmouth and then to the Earl of Radnor.
From 1695 to 1698 it stood empty (ref. 6) but from
December of the latter year it was occupied by
Hervey's nephew, also John, later Lord Hervey
and Earl of Bristol, (ref. 136) who inherited the property
on his aunt's death in 1700, and for most of the
remaining half-century of his life used it as his
town residence.
During the years 1708–10 repairs to the house
and stables were carried out (fn. a) and in December
1709 'new sash windows' were put in. (ref. 137)
(fn. b)
On more than one occasion in the early months
of 1712 Hervey entertained the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene at his house, and his
adherence in 1714 to the interests supporting the
Hanoverian succession brought him both a visit
from George I in November and a step in the
peerage with his elevation from the Barony of
Hervey to the Earldom of Bristol.
In January 1728/9 'a great part of the Roof of
the Stables' fell down. (ref. 138) In June, bricklayer's
work, apparently extensive, was begun, perhaps
consequent upon this damage. (ref. 139) The Earl paid
£42 to 'Mr. Roger Morris ye surveyor in full for
surveying and measuring ye work of my new
building' in April 1731 and at the same time the
Earl paid £355 to William Frith, carpenter, £240
to William Blakesley, bricklayer, and some £50
apiece to Francis Sanders, plasterer, and James
Collishaw, painter: a year later 'Christopher Cass
& Co.' were paid £145 for mason's work, perhaps
on the interior. (ref. 140)
In the autumn of 1741 the Earl gave his eldest
son, the memoir writer, John, Lord Hervey, the
use of the house. Hervey employed forty workmen to make the house 'ready to receive' him, and
spent there, 'well lodg'd', the last two years of his
life. (ref. 141)
The rebuilding of Lord Strafford's house in
1748 caused a dispute between him and the Earl
of Bristol's grandson, Lord Hervey, who acted on
his grandfather's behalf, over the ownership of the
party-wall. It was concluded by an agreement
signed in April 1748 on behalf of the Herveys by
Robert Morris, kinsman of Roger Morris, and by
John Spencer, 'partner with Mr. Timbrell', who
was shortly afterwards concerned with his partner
in the development of the site of Lord Tankerville's house (see page 81). Lord Hervey had
apparently considered employing as his representative in the negotiations Henry Flitcroft, who
was building a house for Hervey's widowed
mother in St. James's Place (see page 539), but
was evidently dissuaded by his grandfather's 'hint
by way of caution . . . that you will find Flitcroft
as extravagant an overvaluer of his skill and time
as any of his brother pickpockets'. (ref. 142)
Bowles's view of the square published in c. 1752
shows No. 6 still to have had substantially its
seventeenth-century appearance, like Nos. 7 and 8
to its west. An internal reconstruction is apparent,
however, in the removal of the front door from
the left-hand to the right-hand end of the façade
since Sutton Nicholls's view of c. 1722 (Plates
128, 130).
Repairs were carried out in about 1771 by
James Nelson, mason, and Arthur Edwards,
painter, to a value of some £180, under the direction of the builder, Henry Holland. (ref. 143)
There is no evidence that the fourth Earl, the
Bishop of Derry, extended his notorious passion
for building to his town residence. But with the
coming of peace after the Napoleonic war the fifth
Earl (later the first Marquis of Bristol) undertook
the rebuilding of the house. Undated elevations
of a new house were prepared for him by George
Dance, the younger. (ref. 144)
At least five designs were made by Dance, all of
them brilliant but even less sympathetic to the
general character of the square than Stuart's and
Adam's fronts at Nos. 15 and 20 had been.
Monumental and almost devoid of domestic
character, they reflect Dance's admiration for the
highly original French neo-classical architecture
of his time, and they would not look out of place
in the pages of Krafft.
The five drawings are preserved in Sir John
Soane's Museum (ref. 144) and they have been numbered
9 to 13 although they are not dated and were not
necessarily produced in that sequence. All appear
to have been intended to fit the same plan, unfortunately not preserved, which must have been
for a house of three storeys and an attic, each
having two rooms of equal width in front, not
unlike No. 6 as it was subsequently built by John
Field.
Design No. 9 has a ground storey coursed with
channel-joints and containing two almost square
openings, each framing a window of three roundheaded lights, the middle light of the right-hand
window being the doorway. The upper face
embraces two storeys and is divided into three bays,
the narrow middle bay flanked by plain-shafted
Corinthian pilasters, and the wide side bays terminated by plain piers. Each side bay contains two
superimposed three-light windows, but the middle
bay is blind and decorated with a niche below a
panel. The entablature breaks forward over each
end pier and across the middle bay where a
triangular pediment is surmounted by a large
carving of the Bristol arms and supporters, rising
against the pedestal attic which has an oblong
window in each side bay.
No. 11, a variant of No. 9, has a plain ground
storey, and Corinthian pilasters flank each bay of
the upper stage. The pediment is raised above the
attic, where the Bristol arms are placed on a plinth
above the entablature of the middle bay.
No. 10 shows the ground storey divided by plain
pilasters, and each storey of the narrow central
bay contains a blind window-panel. The wide
side bays have large semi-circular lunette windows in the attic stage, each divided by stone
mullions into three lights like the windows below.
The Bristol arms surmount the pediment of the
middle-bay entablature.
No. 12 is virtually the same design as the last,
except that the three bays are equal in width.
No. 13 (Plate 194a) also has three bays of the
same width, divided by panelled pilasters in the
ground storey, by plain-shafted Corinthian pilasters in the two-storeyed upper stage, and by plain
pilasters in the attic, where each bay contains a
semi-circular lunette window of three lights. The
side bays have a three-light window in each storey,
but in the middle bay the first two storeys are
filled with channel-jointed masonry courses, and
in the third storey is a panel carved with a relief
of the Bristol arms and supporters.
In the end, however, the Earl employed, not
Dance, but a virtually unknown man, John Field,
whose address was in Bennet Street, off St.
James's Street. (fn. c) The rebuilding took place in
1819–20, with further work on the back premises
in 1821 (Plates 194b, 195, 196, figs. 16–19).
The tone of Field's letters to the Earl suggests
that he was working under close direction and
instruction, although the Earl was abroad for
much of the period. (ref. 146) In the outcome the
owner seems to have been better pleased with his
builder's work than some earlier owners of houses
in the square had been. (fn. d)
A letter of September 1818 from Field shows
that he was directed to model the façade on the
mid eighteenth-century front of No. 2. The
letter contains earnest assurances that the bricks
would be of the best quality, the walls especially
thick, and every part executed with careful regard
to quality. Another letter declared that no
American timber had been used, only Baltic fir
and English oak.
The contents of the old house were sold off in
January 1819, realizing some £565, and the new
building was completed in substance by March
1821, when the Earl was sufficiently pleased with
the work to promise an earlier discharge of the
account than he had intended. His satisfaction
was avowed as his reason for making a final payment in 1825 beyond the sum to which Field was
strictly entitled.
A few names of craftsmen who worked on the
house are known, but it is not quite clear how far
they were independently engaged by the Earl and
how far sub-contractors for whom Field was
financially responsible. The carpenter, named
Carpenter, had recently provided timber flooring
at the Bristols' house on Putney Heath, where his
work had not been altogether satisfactory. Nevertheless, Field, who throughout sounds anxiously
conscious of his responsibilities, warmly recommended Carpenter's continued employment and
vouched for his integrity and skill, confessing that
he himself would ultimately be accountable for
the quality of the work. He suggested that the
first instalment of Carpenter's money should be
paid to him direct, and the remainder by Field
himself out of the money paid to him: his tone indicates that the Earl was in fact free to choose his
own method of paying for the work. When Field's
own account was finally discharged in 1825 he
expressed a voluble gratitude to the Earl for thus
relieving him from 'the weight of anxiety which
long pressed hard upon me' and from 'Mrs.
Stewart's and Mr. Carpenter's claims'. Mrs.
Stewart had executed the main painting and gilding. A Mr. Blore made a 'chimney piece and
figures' which were completed by September
1818, but in October 1821 he was still refusing to
deliver the work to Field by the Earl's order,
being willing to do so only after the discharge of
the account which he had sent direct to the Earl.
Figure 16:
No. 6 St. James's Square, plans
Figure 17:
No. 6 St. James's Square, elevation
The original estimate for rebuilding the house
had been £27,559 but by the time of Field's first
surviving letter in September 1818 the fall in the
price of materials allowed Field to reduce this to
£25,892, which was evidently the figure accepted
by the Earl. In March 1821 Field reported that
prices had again fallen in the past year or two, but
that wages had remained the same. It was estimated in October 1821 that rebuilding the stables
would cost an additional £1972. The final total
was nevertheless higher than the sum of the
estimated costs, amounting to £34,542 9s. 8d.,
which was finally paid off without demur in June
1825, an event which occasioned an outburst of
'gratitude and veneration' from Field. In the
following year he was paid £581 for additional
work on the back premises.
The house built by Field was substantially that
which was pulled down in 1958. It was three
storeys in height with a basement and a garret in
the roof, and the front had four openings to each
floor, the entrance being at the east side. The
plain but distinguished façade (Plate 194b, fig. 17)
was faced with a fine yellow brick and dressed with
Portland stone. Two stone bands occurred at
ground-floor level and another marked the first
floor with a sill-band above it, the simple entablature having paterae in the frieze and a plainly
moulded dentil cornice with a blocking-course.
The window openings were rectangular with
moulded stone architraves, those to the first floor
being lugged and tapered at the sides. The original
Doric entrance doorway, with very plain pilasters
and a triglyphed frieze, had been replaced in 1914
by an Ionic porch, designed by Arthur Blomfield, (ref. 147) with a round-arched doorway and segmental pediment. The fine cast-iron railings to
the front area had five, narrow, round-topped
panels with anthemion and other ornament, and
the guards to the first-floor windows and the
simpler and more conventional ones at secondstorey level were probably original. The roof was
slated with four round-arched dormer windows
lighting the garret.
The plan of the house (figs. 16, 18, 19) was
somewhat muddled. From the square entrance
hall a broad passage led past a service stair and a
small, unlit room to the staircase hall at the rear.
Between the deep front room and a much shallower back room was a secondary stair with a
closet, and behind the main staircase a passage
connected with a wing across the back of the
courtyard containing several small rooms and two
more staircases, one going up and one down.
On the first floor a large top-lit ante-room, to
the south of the staircase, gave access to the two
front rooms which corresponded to those on the
floor below, and the rear room was approached
through a lobby with a small ante-room beside it.
The wing at the back of the courtyard contained
one large room, a lobby and a secondary stair.
The decoration of the interior was crude in its
pseudo-Grecian detail but undoubtedly grand in
effect with boldly modelled plasterwork and
panelled mahogany doors to the principal rooms.
The entrance and staircase halls were not elaborate
but the connecting passage was decorated with
paired Doric pilasters, the frieze to the entablature
ornamented with wreaths, and all three compartments had patterned marble floors. The main
staircase (Plate 195a) was of stone with single
balusters and ornamental panels of cast metal
supporting a mahogany handrail.
The first-floor rooms had rich cornices and
small coves to the ceilings, the walls generally
being plain but for a moulded skirting and chairrail. At the head of the main staircase, which rose
only to the first floor, was a shallow segmentalarched recess flanked by round-headed niches,
and the top-lit ante-room had two semi-elliptical
arches supporting a shallow dome on pendentives,
with a large circular lantern. The richly decorated front drawing-room with Corinthian pilasters
above a pedestal dado, framing plaster panels and
large mirrors, had a shallow segmental ceiling
(Plate 196a). The caps of the pilasters were
linked by a band of wave ornament and the cornice had enriched mouldings and lion masks, with
a cresting of scrolls and rosettes increased in size to
fill the tympanum at either end of the room. The
ceiling was divided into three parts by pairs of
cross-bands and had two, wider, longitudinal
bands wreathed with oak leaves, and three large
rosettes. The doorcases (Plate 195c) had plainly
moulded architraves and panelled margins rising
to large trusses, carved with acanthus, supporting a
plain cornice above a frieze with scrolled acanthus
and ivy. Above the cornice was some very strange
carved decoration, of anthemion and lotus flowers.
The white marble chimneypiece (Plate 196b) has
been removed to Ickworth where there is in the
library a practically identical chimneypiece, which
is stated to be by Canova. (ref. 148) But the former is
identical with another at Cobham Hall, perhaps
made for J. Wyatt by T. Vardy in 1774. The
opening has a narrow, flat surround carved with
leaf decoration, and above is a long panel with a
relief of naked boys harvesting grapes, and an
enriched dentil cornice-shelf. On either side are
groups of lovers, on pedestals, carved in the round
and framed by Roman Doric columns and halfcolumns, their flutes partially filled, supporting an
entablature with triglyphs and carved metopes in
the frieze and a cornice which continues that
above the central part.
The passage leading to the rear wing had an
apse with a coffered semi-dome at either end containing a corniced doorway with carved consoles.
The central part had a groined ceiling, the segmental head of the window following the curve
above it (Plate 195b).
The courtyard of the house was faced with a
yellow brick, inferior to that used for the principal
façade, and there were no stone architraves to the
windows (figs. 18, 19). The ground-floor level
was marked by a broad stone band which supported
a round-arched arcade on each long side containing
the square-headed window openings, with plinth
blocks to the piers and moulded stone imposts.
Each end wall was set forward to contain a similar
but segmental-arched recess, and a stone band at
first-floor level was continued as a capping to the
screen wall against No. 7. The upper windows
were also square-headed, except the round-arched
ground- and first-floor windows lighting the main
staircase, which may have been altered, and that to
the connecting corridor, its segmental head springing from plain stone impost blocks. Beneath the
second-floor windows ran a sill-band and the
parapet to the roof was finished with a small cornice and a blocking-course.
The house was demolished in 1958 and an
office block is being built by Fitzroy Robinson
and Partners fronting the square and extending
northward and eastward into the former Babmays
Mews. It is to communicate with the surviving
Brettingham house at No. 5.