No. 7
Architect for rebuilding, (Sir) Edwin Lutyens, 1911
The date on which the Earl of St. Albans disposed of this site is not known, but it was in
1674 that he came to an agreement with John
Angier, a carpenter, later described as a 'gentleman' of Westminster, who was to build on it a
'Piatza house'. (ref. 149) Angier (fn. a) made sub-contracts
for the building of No. 7, and agreed that the
mason's work should be performed by Abraham
Storey, who at about the same time was undertaking the construction of No. 6 adjoining.
According to a later Chancery petition from
Angier, the Earl, who had evidently not disposed
of the property outright, then altered his 'intencion' by 'designeing more masons worke then
before', and made a new arrangement by which
Storey was to accept payment for the mason's
work direct from the Earl. Angier continued to
be responsible to the Earl for all the other
work. (ref. 149)
By 1676 the Earl had disposed of the property
to Angier who appears as the freeholder in the
rent-roll of that year, paying the same groundrent of £15 8s. 4d. as was reserved at Nos. 5 and 6. (ref. 150)
In the autumn of 1677 Angier was arranging the
sale of No. 7 with Robert Hooke, who had
negotiated similarly with Storey at No. 6. The
purchaser of No. 7 was Richard Jones, Viscount
(from 11 December 1677 Earl of) Ranelagh,
whom Macky described as having 'spent more
Money, built more fine Houses, and laid out
more on Household Furniture and Gardening
than any other Nobleman in England; he is a
great Epicure and prodigious Expensive'. (ref. 77) There
was haggling over the purchase price, which was
finally settled at £4800, to be paid by instalments
spread over three and a half years with a downpayment of £1000. The building was probably
not completely finished at this period and in
January 1677/8 Hooke performed a service
similar to that which he undertook at No. 6 and
'directed Lord Ranelaugh's stairs'. (ref. 151)
The subsequent architectural history of the
house, until its rebuilding by (Sir) Edwin Lutyens
in 1911, is known only in part. There was perhaps no one complete earlier rebuilding. In 1694
Lord Ranelagh, having recently built a house at
Chelsea, vacated No. 7 and was succeeded there by
Charles Robartes, second Earl of Radnor, who at
about the same time bought the house and almost
immediately mortgaged it to Lord Brudenell to
secure £2500 lent to him by Brudenell's daughter,
the Countess of Newburgh. (ref. 152) The house seems
to have been mortgaged throughout all or most of
the period of Lord Radnor's ownership and was
still mortgaged when it was sold by his sister after
his death in 1723. (ref. 153)
Figure 18a:
No. 6 St. James's Square, section A-A
Figure 18b:
No. 6 St. James's Square, section A-A
Lord Radnor decorated the interior of the
house elaborately. Vertue says that 'when he
beautify'd his house [he] imploy'd several of the
most Ingenious Artists then living in England to
paint for him', and dwells at some length on
the paintings which could be seen in the house.
The staircase was painted by Louis Laguerre. The
Dutch painter of still-life, Vanzoon, to whom
Lord Radnor was patron, and who lived nearby in
St. Albans Street, had provided 'many large pieces
for over-doors, chimneys, etc.', and other pieces by
Gerard Edema and Van Wyke which Vertue
mentions were probably also parts of the scheme
of decoration. Vertue lists other paintings in the
house, apparently easel-pictures, which were sold
after Radnor's death. (ref. 154)
Bowles's view published in c. 1752 (Plate 130)
suggests that the interior work carried out at this
period was not accompanied by any radical
alteration of the seventeenth-century front. Some
of the internal decorations still survived in 1895 (ref. 155)
and probably lasted until Lutyens's rebuilding.
After Lord Radnor's death the house was
owned and intermittently occupied by the Scawen
family of Carshalton, Surrey. From them it
passed to Earl Brooke, Earl of Warwick, who
occupied the house from 1770. (ref. 6) In the previous
year, while the house was empty, Joseph Dixon
did mason's work, which was perhaps part of a
more extensive operation, on Lord Warwick's
house in the square, to the value of some £431,
under the direction of the builder, Henry Holland.
This was probably here, where the rate was increased between 1769 and 1772, rather than at
No. 32 (see pages 202–3). The work included the
repair of existing and the provision of new marble
chimneypieces, (fn. b) and also plain mason's work in
Portland stone. (ref. 156)
The Hollands' connexion with the house continued, for in January 1782 the architect, Henry
Holland, junior, of St. George's, Hanover Square,
bought the house from the Earl of Warwick. (ref. 157)
The new occupant, however, was Richard Barwell, the notoriously rich Anglo-Indian, for whom
Holland's father-in-law, 'Capability' Brown, was
altering the house and garden at Stanstead in
Sussex (ref. 158) and to whom Holland sold No. 7 in
January 1783, a year after he himself had bought
it. (ref. 159) It was possibly at this time that the house
was refronted with the plain brick façade shown
in Ackermann's view of 1812 (Plate 131).
From 1797 the house was occupied for more
than a hundred years by the Egerton family of
Tatton, Cheshire. Probably no radical alterations
were made in the structure of the house during
this period, although an iron verandah was added
to the front by Messrs. Cubitt in 1857. (ref. 160)
After the death of Earl Egerton in 1909 the
house was bought by three bachelor brothers,
W. F., G. O., and H. L. Farrer, of whom the
first and last were solicitors and the second a merchant banker. A country house, the Salutation
at Sandwich, Kent, was being built for them by
(Sir) Edwin Lutyens, and in 1911 Lutyens rebuilt No. 7 as a town residence for their joint
occupation. (fn. c) In The Lutyens Memorial it is
stated that the main walls of the front rooms of the
old house were retained. (ref. 163) The house was occupied as a private residence until it was requisitioned
by the Government in 1943. (ref. 164) It is at present
occupied as offices by the Minister of Labour.
The present front is of dull-pink brick dressed
with stone, being four storeys high and five windows wide (Plate 202a). As the fenestral pattern
of the first three storeys closely resembles that of
the previous front, and the new brick face projected some five inches beyond the neighbouring
house-fronts, it must appear that Lutyens refaced
the existing wall and added the fourth storey,
which is disproportionately tall. The window
openings have flat heads of gauged bricks with keystones, both their heads and jambs being of a darker
red brick, while within them are sashes subdivided
by thick glazing-bars and set in box frames. There
are broad stone bandcourses above the heads of
the windows in the ground and third storeys and
another narrower one immediately beneath the
tall second-storey windows. An entablature surmounted by a balustrade completes the elevation
and behind it are three pedimented dormer windows. Only in the treatment of the main entrance,
which occupies the second bay from the west in the
ground storey, is there a small Lutyens idiosyncrasy. The panelled double doors are framed by a
shouldered architrave the raised keystone of which
is decorated with a foliated cartouche, while above
it is a large panel carved with fruit and flowers.
Before the entrance is a pedimented porch supported on paired Ionic columns, the latter being
unusual in that the square outer column of each
pair has the round inner column attached to it and
set slightly forward. The area railings are probably an eighteenth-century survival.
Figure 19:
No. 6 St. James's Square, section B-B
The internal arrangement of the house is
interesting, the plan being approximately an 'H'
with the middle wing lit from each side and the
principal rear rooms at a mezzanine level. (fn. d) The
decoration is largely of a late seventeenth-century
character and is very simple apart from the inner
hall and staircase, the dining-room at the rear and
the huge library above it.
The square entrance hall, which is entered towards one corner, has a mutule cornice apparently
of early or mid eighteenth-century date and in the
front room the carved architraves and shutters to
the window openings are of the same period. The
inner hall is lined with oak panelling framed by
fluted Doric pilasters, the central portion having a
barrel-vaulted ceiling on the axis of the staircase,
which rises between the enclosed service stair to
the west and a cloakroom to the east. At the first
quarter-space landing a central doorway leads into
the dining-room which, with a small servery,
occupies the full width of the house. The room
has a curious arrangement of Ionic columns before the servery, resembling an eighteenth-century
bed-recess, and above the entablature there is a
small cove rising to a plain ceiling. The staircase
is of oak, for the most part with heavy turned
balusters, and continues above the cloakroom.
round a narrow well, to the upper hall where a
further flight of steps gives access to the library
(Plate 202c). The whole arrangement of steps
and landings is in marked contrast to the formal
character of the upper hall itself, with its four
long windows on either side.
The drawing-room and ante-room at the front
of the house are modest in character but the library
is the full width of the site and its barrel-vaulted
ceiling rises into the second storey (Plate 202d).
The oak fittings have fluted Corinthian pilasters
and engaged columns supporting a full entablature
with pediments to the bookcases, window openings and chimney-breasts, and richly carved festoons and drops of fruit and flowers, the two
chimneypieces being of black and white marble.
The ceiling is divided by ornamented ribs, with
panelled compartments at either end, and is intersected by smaller vaults over each bay of the room.
The second and third floors have two bedrooms
in front with one bathroom between them and
another flanking a spine corridor which is lit from
the west. On the third floor the same arrangement
is repeated at the rear above the library, and the
garret storey contains bedrooms for servants. The
following six chimneypieces, which may have
belonged to the old house, are installed in the principal bedrooms.
1. On the second floor in the east room: late
eighteenth-century, of white and brown marble,
the plain surround flanked by simplified Corinthian
pilasters ornamented with drops, supporting a
narrow architrave, a frieze with a tablet bearing a
tazza and end blocks with enriched paterae, and
a plainly moulded cornice-shelf. This is perhaps the
chimneypiece provided in 1769 for the diningroom by Joseph Dixon (see above). 2. In the west
room: mid eighteenth-century, of wood with
marble slips, the lugged architrave and corniceshelf having carved mouldings and the frieze a
fret pattern with a plain central tablet. 3. On the
third floor, in the east front room: mid eighteenth-century but perhaps altered, of wood with marble
slips, having carved mouldings to the lugged
architrave and cornice-shelf, the frieze bearing an
urn and scroll decoration. 4. In the west room:
generally similar to the last but probably late
eighteenth-century, with a deep fluted frieze and a
curious cornice-shelf with a carved bed-moulding.
5. At the rear in the east room: probably late
eighteenth-century, of wood with marble slips,
carving to the lugged architrave, a fluted frieze
with blocks bearing enriched paterae and a plain
dentil cornice. 6. In the west room: of white
marble and probably late eighteenth-century
though now difficult to see, the opening flanked by
tapered and fluted pilasters, the frieze fluted and
having blocks decorated with anthemion ornament and a tablet with a festooned and enriched
patera, the cornice-shelf being plainly moulded.
The rear elevation of the house (Plate 202b) is
faced with the same brick as the front but has few
stone dressings and is less conventional in design.
The ground- and first-floor windows are square-headed and above a plain storey-band is an unpierced wall where the vault of the library rises
into the second storey. The third-floor windows
have pronounced segmental heads with a brick
impost-band and the dormers to the fourth floor
are flush with the wall face, the hipped, tiled roof
being stopped each side of them but the gutter
being carried across in front. On the ground floor
the three central windows open on to a raised
terrace with an iron railing, and beneath the
courtyard are rooms lit from wells in the centre of
each side.
The stable building fronting on to Apple Tree
Yard at the rear was not rebuilt by Lutyens and
despite a good deal of alteration appears to date
from the middle or second half of the eighteenth
century. It is of two main storeys and is built of
pinkish-yellow brick with stone sills and copings,
the south front having a recessed centre, two windows wide, and wings of the same width, the
eastern one retaining a lunette window in an open
pediment.