No. 19
Architects, Messrs. Rolfe and Matthews, 1898–9<redeveloped 1999-2000>
The site of this building was sold in August
1674 by the Earl of St. Albans and his leasehold
and freehold trustees to Richard Frith and his
trustees in compliance with an agreement of the
previous June. The site was said to abut north on
'Kings street alias Charles street'. (ref. 398) A unique
circumstance here was that the Earl of Shaftesbury
was associated with St. Albans in the grant and
that it was to Shaftesbury that the ground-rent of
£16 19s. 2d. per annum was to be paid. (fn. a) The
house appears in the ratebook for 1677 in the
occupation of the Earl of Essex, to whom Frith's
mortgagees sold the house for £6000 in June
1679. (ref. 400) After Essex's supposed suicide in the
Tower in July 1683 his estates were forfeited to
the Crown but in the same year were granted to
his brother and executor Sir Henry Capel. (ref. 401) In
March 1691/2 the second Earl of Essex, Sir
Henry Capel and others conveyed the house to the
Earl's father-in-law, the Earl of Portland, with
provision under trust for its sale to finance certain
payments undertaken by Essex in his recent
marriage settlement. (ref. 402)
It was probably at about this time that the house
was sold to Alexander Popham, M.P. for Bath,
who occupied it from 1693 to 1705. In June
1720 his descendants sold the house for £5000 to
the Duke of Cleveland, (ref. 403) whose family owned it
until 1894.
In 1746 the house was repaired, (ref. 6) but Bowles's
view (Plate 130) published in c. 1752 seems to
show the old seventeenth-century exterior little
changed. The house must have been subsequently
altered to give it substantially the form it had
at the time of its demolition in 1895. (ref. 404) At
some time before 1836 (ref. 405) the entrance was removed from the square to King Street but there is
no documentary evidence when this change took
place.
The internal arrangement of the house was
fully recorded by a survey made in 1892 (fig. 32).
This shows that the rooms fronting towards the
square and to King Street had back walls even
more massively built than the substantial front
walls, which suggests that the original plan of the
house had not been essentially changed by alterations carried out, on the unconfirmed evidence of
the plan-forms, during the latter part of the
eighteenth century. It seems probable, therefore,
that the body of the house as first built was oblong,
with rooms facing on to the square, to King
Street, and to the back court, all ranged round
three sides of the principal and secondary staircases, the former probably roofed at a lower level
and lit by a cupola-lantern. The entrance doorway, in the middle opening of the front towards
the square, suggests a large hall, with a room on
its north side and an opening opposite the front
door leading, past the service stair, to the principal
staircase compartment, where doors opened to all
the other rooms on this floor. This arrangement
would most probably have been repeated on the
principal storey, with two linked drawing-rooms
in front. The later alterations must have included
the conversion of the ground-storey front rooms
into a splendid eating-room, with a shallow side-board-bay at each end screened by columns, and
the construction of a new great staircase rising in a
single flight from a colonnaded ante, then dividing
right and left to return in parallel flights to a
colonnaded gallery with an apse at each end. The
loss of the front hall was compensated by using the
north-west room fronting to King Street, where a
new entrance was formed with a Doric porch
projecting to the pavement's edge.
Dasent's sketch of the house shortly before
demolition (ref. 404) (fig. 33) suggests that the front
towards the square, although probably refaced, had
retained its original fenestration, each of the three
storeys having five windows—four grouped to the
south of one. All had moulded architraves, those
of the principal storey rising from a simple pedestal,
and those of the chamber storey underlined by a
continued sill. The modillioned eaves-cornice
shown by Sutton Nicholls and by Bowles (Plates
128, 130) had been replaced by a high parapet,
almost concealing the pedimented dormers in the
roof. The projecting central face of the King Street
front looked as if it had been rebuilt, possibly in the
late eighteenth century, with four tall windows in
the principal storey and four oblong windows in
the chamber storey, where the floor was raised to
accommodate the high ceiling of the great room
below.
Figure 32:
Cleveland House St. James's Square, plans. Re-drawn from plans in possession of Lord Barnard
Figure 33:
Cleveland House, St. James's Square. Re-drawn from A. I. Dasent's History
In August 1891 the fourth and last Duke of
Cleveland died and the house passed to his cousin,
the ninth Lord Barnard. He, together with
trustees, sold the house to Arnold Gabriel of
Porchester Terrace for £51,320 in August
1894. (ref. 398) By this period the house had fallen into
some degree of disrepair. Dasent, writing shortly
afterwards, commented: 'The external appearance
of Cleveland House had for many years before its
demolition been more curious than pleasing,
though the interior still retained some faint traces
of its early splendour in the shape of handsome
marble mantelpieces (even in the basement),
gilded ceilings, and polished floors. Such relics of
old London are, however, foredoomed to destruction so soon as their owners neglect to keep them
in reasonable repair; and in the case of Cleveland
House the intrinsic value of the site was too great
to permit the retention of such a mouldering
vestige of antiquity'. (ref. 406) The house was pulled
down in 1894 and in the same year Lewis Solomon
prepared plans for rebuilding on the site (ref. 407) but
these were not executed. In September 1897
Gabriel's widow sold the site to Cleveland House
Ltd. (ref. 398) The present building was erected to the
design of Messrs. Rolfe and Matthews of Great
George Street, Westminster, in 1898–9, after
doubts expressed by the District Surveyor about
the 'new' character of the 'complex engineering
iron-work' supporting the 'Oriels and Turrets'
had been satisfied. (ref. 408) It was first occupied by
departments of the War Office formerly housed
at No. 21, but from about 1909 was mainly in
residential occupation. (ref. 81)