Nos. 4–6 Soho Square
This building was erected in 1801–4 and stands
upon the site of three separate houses whose
previous histories are described individually
below.
No. 4
On 5 January 1680/1 Richard Frith and William Pym leased this site and the probably uncompleted house on it to Cadogan Thomas of Lambeth, timber merchant. (ref. 53) Nothing has been
found about the completion of the house, whose
first recorded occupant was Sir Thomas Traville;
he lived here from at least 1691 to 1697 or later.
Captain Carew was here from 1721 to 1725. (ref. 33)
In May 1724 Katherine Kerr of St. James's,
widow, was granted a reversionary lease of this
house for thirty-five years from Michaelmas 1734
from the first Duke of Portland. At the same time
she obtained a similar lease of the adjoining No. 5,
with the intention of rebuilding both houses,
then in a dilapidated condition. (ref. 54) By May 1726
both houses were said to have fallen down, and
had been rebuilt by Thomas Lucas of St. Andrew's, Holborn, bricklayer, to whom the Portland leases were assigned. (ref. 55) The redevelopment
of these two sites appears to have involved Lucas
in financial difficulties for he was bankrupt in
1727. (ref. 56) The new No. 4 was complete and first
occupied in 1727. (ref. 33)
No. 5
On 3 January 1680/1 Richard Frith and William Pym leased this site and the probably uncompleted house on it to Cadogan Thomas of
Lambeth, timber merchant. (ref. 57) Nothing has been
found about the completion of the house, whose
first recorded occupant was Colonel Hastings;
he lived here in 1691 (or possibly earlier) and
1692. Other inhabitants include Captain Kerr,
1695–1710, and Orlando Bridgeman, later
fourth baronet, M.P., 1719–25. (ref. 33)
With No. 4, this house, then in dilapidated
condition, was leased in 1724 to Katherine Kerr
of St. James's, widow. (ref. 54) Both houses were
rebuilt by Thomas Lucas of St. Andrew's,
Holborn, bricklayer, by 1726. (ref. 55) The new house
remained empty until June 1728, when the lease
was assigned to George Heathcote of Earl Stoke,
Wiltshire, esquire, who lived here until 1733. (ref. 58)
From 1737 to 1743 the house was occupied by
George Dashwood (ref. 33) whose name appears in a
report of a Select Committee of the House of
Commons inquiry into the affairs of the Select
Vestry of St. Anne. The parish rate collector
stated that he 'had informed the Vestry, that
Mr. Dashwood, in Soho-Square, was overrated, and desired that he might be abated to his
just Proportion; but that he was answered, That
Mr. Dashwood was a Gentleman, and could afford
to pay; and besides, that he served no [parish]
Offices'. (ref. 59) Soon after Dashwood's departure
in 1743 the rateable value of the house was
reduced from £80 to £64 per annum. (ref. 33)
Later inhabitants include William Northey,
Wiltshire landowner and M.P., who had previously lived at No. 3, 1748–50; John Thomas,
successively Bishop of Peterborough, Salisbury and
Winchester, 1753–62, and John Trotter, army
contractor, 1785–90. (ref. 33)
No. 6
The early history of No. 6 has been described
above with that of No. 3. Sir John Thompson,
subsequently first Baron Haversham, Whig
politician, was living here in 1691, and later
occupied No. 23. Other inhabitants included
Colonel Le Neve, 1691–1716; Colonel Lucas,
1726–8; James Dawkins, ? M.P., traveller,
active Jacobite and eccentric, 1745, and Winchcombe Hartley, Berkshire landowner and M.P.,
1777–84. (ref. 33)
Later History of Nos. 4–6
In 1800 John Trotter, who had occupied No.
5 Soho Square from 1785 to 1790 and No. 7 from
1793, took possession of Nos. 4, 5 and 6 (ref. 33) for the
erection of a warehouse. Trotter was the head of
a firm of army contractors and was, after the
outbreak of war with revolutionary France, in
control of all government stores, a responsibility
officially recognized in 1807 by his appointment
as 'Storekeeper-general'. (ref. 60)
The extensive premises which he erected in
Soho Square between 1801 and 1804 covered the
sites of the three demolished houses (Nos. 4, 5
and 6) and extended westward to Dean Street
(Plate 135a, fig. 3). No. 7 Soho Square was
retained unaltered as Trotter's private residence. (ref. 61)
On the conclusion of his storekeeping duties
at the end of the Napoleonic wars, from which
Trotter seems to have emerged with a considerable private fortune and a somewhat damaged
reputation, he lavished his energy on a number
of other schemes, including an abortive one for a
universal language. (ref. 60) The most successful of his
projects was the foundation of the Soho Bazaar.
For this purpose Trotter adapted his now useless
warehouse in Soho Square for the encouragement of 'Female and Domestic Industry', he
being anxious to stop the country from pouring
'its happy and innocent virgins into the common
sink of London'. (ref. 62) The bazaar, 'a well known
oriental term for a kind of fixed fair or market', (ref. 63)
was to be, so Trotter claimed, an institution
'founded on . . . benevolent and patriotic principles' and not a gratuitous charity. Through its
offices 'the industrious . . . may hope to thrive;
reduced tradesmen may recover and retain their
connexions; beginners may form friends, connexions, and habits, before they encounter more
extensive speculations; and artists, artizans, and
whole families, employed at home, although
infirm or in the country, may securely vend their
labour to advantage by proxy'. (ref. 62)
Having failed to persuade the Government to
undertake this project, he opened the bazaar
himself on 1 February 1816. (ref. 64) The interior of
the disused warehouse was laid out with stalls
and counters arranged on two floors of the building in the manner of a closed market. The vendors
hired their selling spaces by the day and there were
stringent rules for the conduct of business, but
everything was conducted on the 'fairest and
most liberal plan'. The goods sold consisted chiefly
of millinery, gloves, lace, jewellery and potted
plants. (ref. 62)
The interior layout of the bazaar was described in considerable detail by the Reverend
Joseph Nightingale in his pamphlet The Bazaar,
published in May 1816 to advertise this novel
institution. The ground floor was occupied by
one large room hung with red cloth and large
mirrors and solidly furnished with mahogany
counters; two of the back rooms, called the
grotto and the parterre, were both decorated with
climbing plants; there was a kitchen providing
meals for the vendors, with 'a stove of a peculiar
construction sending forth two distinct columns
of heat' to warm the rooms. Another feature of
the establishment, and that an unexpectedly
modern one for an early nineteenth-century shop,
was a ladies' dressing-room. (ref. 62)
Trotter's experiment proved a success. A
quarter of a century later Thomas Allen described it as 'a very extensive, novel and curious
establishment' (ref. 63) and the most notable feature of
Soho Square. Its success encouraged the opening
of other bazaars elsewhere in London, for instance at the Pantheon in Oxford Street, which
was remodelled in 1834 'to compete with the one
in Soho-square', (ref. 65) but as late as 1843 Trotter's
bazaar was still described as standing 'at the
head of its class'. (ref. 66)
The bazaar continued in existence at Nos. 4–6
until 1889, when the building was taken over by
the present occupants, the publishing firm of
Adam and Charles Black. They had previously
traded from Edinburgh but had purchased the
freehold of Nos. 4–6, together with the back premises in Dean Street, for £16,000 in June 1889.
The new owners had to carry out few internal
alterations to the building and the mahogany
counters of the bazaar were easily converted to
office use. The façade of Trotter's warehouse,
which had remained unchanged since the early
years of the century, was altered by the insertion
of the present shop front, with the consequent
change in the position of the doorway from the
central to the second bay. The architect responsible for these alterations was A. Lest. (ref. 67)
The building is four storeys high and seven
windows in width, the yellow stock brick front
having plain square-headed windows and an
insignificant crowning cornice in stucco. Before
alteration the ground storey had three wide roundarched openings alternating with narrower squareheaded ones. There are no internal features of
interest except for some thin reeded mid nineteenth-century cast-iron columns supporting the
glazed roof of a single-storeyed extension at the
rear. The back premises at No. 6 Dean Street
are described on page 131.