Old Burlington Street

Only one of the original houses remains on the east side of the street. This is No. 6, one of a trio of similar houses of which Nos. 4 and 5 were demolished in 1962. The rest, with the exception of No. 2, are of late nineteenth- or early twentiethcentury date, but all conform roughly to the height and scale of the older buildings.

No. 2 is a five-storeyed house built of yellow brick, the top two storeys being probably quite a modern addition. The front, which is three windows wide, has been painted red and much altered in other respects, probably to conform with the adjoining return front of Uxbridge House. Basically, however, the house appears to be of late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century date. The interior has been completely altered.

Nos. 3, 7, 8 and 9 are late nineteenth-century buildings of four or five storeys with fronts of red brick dressed with stone. They are elaborate and emphatic in style, but not otherwise distinguished. No. 7 was designed by J. T. Wimperis in 1883. (ref. 308) No. 10–13, dating perhaps from about 1920, has a very plain stone front embellished with a few classical details.

Nos. 21–24 and 26–34, on the west side of the street, are described separately below.

Nos. 4, 5 and 6 Old Burlington Street

Nos. 4 and 5 demolished

There is little to be said of the history of these houses beyond what appears in the table on page 556, from which it will appear that the builders Knight, Timbrell and Stallwood, all of whom occur elsewhere on the Burlington estate, were associated with the leases in one capacity or another.

At No. 4 the lessee, Lady Mary Forrester, assigned her lease (together with a short lease of a piece of garden ground in or near Swallow Street) to Timbrell in October 1722, and on the next day he mortgaged these properties back to her to secure £1500. (ref. 309) In February 1722/3 Timbrell and another mortgagee assigned the lease for £1530 to the first occupant of the house, Mrs. Anne Lumley, (ref. 310) widow of General Henry Lumley who had died in the previous year. (ref. 241) She lived here until 1736.

In 1828 the house was taken by the tailor James Poole, for the firm of Poole and Cooling, (ref. 24) later Henry Poole and Company (see page 537).

At Nos. 5 and 6 the first mortgagee was the Joseph Hayes who occurs elsewhere on the estate in that capacity. At No. 5 he and the first lessee, Stallwood, joined in assigning the lease in December 1722 to the first occupant. (ref. 311) This was Colonel the Hon. William Egerton, a brother of the first Duke of Bridgwater. He had fought at Sheriffmuir, and lived here until his death in 1732. (ref. 312)

At No. 6 Timbrell assigned his lease in March 1722/3 to the first occupant, Richard Arundell of Lanherne, Cornwall, (ref. 313) who lived here until his death in February 1724/5. He was son of Sir Richard Bellings, secretary to Queen Catherine of Braganza, and took the name of his mother's family. (ref. 314) He had previously lived at No. 33 St. James's Square. (ref. 315) He is to be distinguished from the Hon. Richard Arundell of the family of Trerice, Cornwall, who was the first occupant of No. 34 in this street.

In 1780 the house was leased by the Duke of Devonshire to his London agent, John Heaton, (ref. 316) who had occupied the house since 1777 and in 1783 also took No. 7. (ref. 24) He remained here until 1817, using the house as the Devonshires' London estate office. From 1842 the house was occupied by C. and J. Weatherby, publishers of the Racing Calendar, until 1913.

Nos. 4 and 5 were demolished in 1962.

Architectural Description

The following description was written before Nos. 4 and 5 were demolished.

The three houses are uniform, each containing a basement and four storeys (Plate 81b). It is clear from the brickwork that the back walls were originally of three storeys only, the fourth storey being wholly or in part a garret, but resurfacing has destroyed the evidence for the fronts. No. 4 now has a garret contained in a blue-slated mansard roof and here the alteration has clearly involved the reconstruction of the fourth storey. The fronts, probably of plum-coloured brick, are four windows wide with raised bandcourses between the storeys and broad pilaster-strips marking the position of the party walls. The jambs and gauged arches of the windows, the bandcourses, and the quoins of the pilaster-strips are of a fine quality red brick, while the bandcourse at third-floor level, which is carried over the pilaster-strips, is finished with a small stone cornice. The sashes, or at No. 4 the casements, are modern, as are the flush frames at Nos. 4 and 6. At No. 6 two of the ground-storey windows have been enlarged, but remain in keeping with the others. Only No. 5 retains its original doorsurround, a moulded stone architrave flanked by half-pilasters and finished with a frieze and cornice. The door has six raised-and-fielded panels in heavily moulded frames, and there is a semicircular fanlight over it. The doorway of No. 4 has a modern wood surround and that of No. 6 a modern wooden porch. No. 6 has the original area-railings with urn-finials to the standards, but Nos. 4 and 5 have late nineteenth-century railings of the same pattern as those at No. 3. The back elevations, which are of plum-coloured brick, differ from the fronts in that the windows are segmental-headed and there is no bandcourse at third-floor level. There are no pilaster-strips, but instead the external chimney-stacks are drawn into the design, the bandcourses being carried across them and their quoins formed of red brick.

The interiors were arranged on a common plan originally, but substantial alterations have since been made, notably by the incorporation of most of the ground floors of Nos. 4 and 5 into the workrooms of Poole's at Nos. 37–38 Savile Row. The front part of the ground and first floors was divided equally between a room and the main stair compartment, while the back part was occupied by another larger room with the secondary staircase next to it, behind the main staircase (fig. 91). At No. 4 the back room on the ground floor originally had only an opening on to the secondary staircase, instead of a door, but insufficient evidence remains to show whether there was ever a lobby connecting this opening with the main stair compartment (the second-floor back room of No. 9 Clifford Street has a comparable arrangement). The second floor comprised four rooms, two small ones at the back and two large ones at the front, with a central passage giving separate access to each room from the secondary staircase. The two front rooms were served by a small lobby which led off this passage, and in No. 5 at least the south-east corner, so forming a bed recess.

Figure 91: No. 5 Old Burlington Street,first-floor plan

Remains of the original finishings are very fragmentary, except in the main stair compartments and in the ground-floor front room of No. 6, and even so only No. 4 has an unaltered staircase. The general impression is of plain but good quality carpenter's work, the walls being panelled in two heights, with moulded dado-rails and simple box-cornices, the doors and shutters panelled and the doorways framed by unelaborated moulded architraves. The ground and first floors seem to have had raised-and-fielded panels in one-fillet ovolo-moulded frames, while the second floor had sunk panels, those in the front rooms with ovolomoulded frames, the rest with plain ones. Only three original chimneypieces have survived, a bolection-moulded one of white marble in the hall of No. 4, a plain white marble one with a shouldered architrave in the first-floor front room of No. 6, and an ordinary stone one with moulded edges and a wooden cornice-shelf, which is also at No. 6 on the second floor. In the ground-floor front room of No. 6 there is a carved wooden chimneypiece of appropriate date, but this was clearly not designed for the position it now occupies.

The main stair compartment must always have been the best feature of the houses, a spacious two-storeyed room with walls fully panelled and floor paved with marble. The staircase itself, taking No. 4 as typical (Plate 91b), is built round three sides of the compartment and has a gallery at first-floor level which is returned along part of the back wall to give access to the secondary stair. The cut strings are decorated with carved step-ends, each step carrying three twisted balusters, and at each bend of the stair is a fluted column newel balanced by a fluted pilaster attached to the dado opposite. The slender moulded handrail is ramped up over the newels and voluted at the bottom over a cluster of balusters. The staircases at Nos. 5 and 6 were probably of the same pattern as this originally, but at No. 5 the newels have been replaced and at No. 6 (Plate 91c) the whole staircase reconstructed in order to reduce the width of the compartment and inbeing dog-legged with heavily moulded closed strings, turned balusters and square, octagonal or column newels. Except where a later alteration has been made they rise from basement to third floor and are finished at the top with a gallerybalustrade.

Although the interiors were clearly much altered in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, very little of this later work is worth noting. One of the hall doors at No. 4 has a patterned fanlight over it in which is set a lamp, and No. 5 has on the second floor a brown marble chimneypiece with broad fluted pilasters attached to its jambs and a flower carved at either end of its frieze. No. 6 has a little more, the back rooms on both the ground and first floors having been redesigned with curved ends. The first-floor rooms, back and front, have plaster friezes of sphinxes, and the back room also has a pleasant white marble chimneypiece with flowers and beaded ovals on its panelled jambs.

No. 21 Old Burlington Street: The Burlington Arms

This site, together with that of Nos. 13 and 14 Coach and Horses Yard, was leased to the bricklayer John Witt by a lease dated in September 1719. (ref. 317) The first ratepayer, in 1722, was a Robert Hyde and in this year the site is referred to as a stable and stable yard. (ref. 318) In 1752 Peter Mattam appears as occupant and the same name continues until 1783. (ref. 24) There is no record of a tavern here in the surviving victuallers' licences from 1756 to 1776, and in 1780 the lessee, Peter Mattam, is described as a stable keeper. But the property then leased to him by the Duke of Devonshire included a 'messuage commonly called . . . the Coach and Horses', presumably a tavern. (ref. 319) From 1785 the occupant was Thomas Hodges who in 1793 was licensee for a tavern called the Burlington Arms. (ref. 320) The present public house was rebuilt in 1882 by George Treacher. (ref. 321)

Nos. 22–23 Old Burlington Street

The sites of these houses and of No. 24 Old Burlington Street were granted to the bricklayer John Witt by a single lease dated on the same day in September 1719 as those of No. 21 Old Burlington Street to the north and of Nos. 4 and 5 Clifford Street to the west. (ref. 322)

The site now occupied by Nos. 22 and 23 was used as a stable yard (ref. 318) and no buildings appear there in the ratebooks for some sixty years. A building is first rated on the site in 1772–3, and a second in 1783–4, both at a low assessment. The more southerly of the two was occupied in 1780 by Joseph Philips, 'yeoman'. (ref. 316)

The present Nos. 22 and 23 were built in 1812. (ref. 24) The first occupant of the former was John Mitford, a relation of Lord Redesdale.

Architectural Description

These are paired houses, containing a basement and four storeys, with fronts respectively two and four windows wide. At No. 22 the windows have been dressed with stucco architraves and a poorly detailed doorcase has been added, but the front of No. 23 shows little sign of alteration. It is very plain, with only a stucco bandcourse at first-floor level and a frieze-band below the coping, but the windows are well proportioned and the sashes are furnished with the proper arrangement of glazing-bars. The doorway has a six-panelled door framed with a reeded-andstopped architrave set with a fanlight in a plain arched opening. The interiors are as plain as the fronts, with no features calling for special description.

No. 24 Old Burlington Street

This house was built by Witt under his lease of 1719, and was probably first occupied in 1724 by Elizabeth Scott, widow. (ref. 24) In 1780 it was leased, like other houses nearby, to John Riley of Long Acre, upholsterer, (ref. 316) who a few years later let it out, like his other properties, to tenants. (ref. 24) From 1810–11 it was occupied by John Ladley, brushmaker, who probably built the northernmost bay for warehousing. (ref. 323) A rise in the rateable value between 1831 and 1833 may mark the addition of an upper storey. (ref. 24)

Architectural Description

This is a plain, much altered house, containing a basement and four storeys, with a fifth storey over the northern part. The wide frontage to Old Burlington Street has six windows spaced unevenly in each upper storey, and the return front to Clifford Street has two. The ground storey has been stuccoed, a clumsy porch has been added to the doorway, and the ground-storey windows have segmental-arched heads broken by large keystones. The bandcourse at first-floor level is probably original, but those immediately beneath the sills of the second- and third-floor windows look like later additions. The brickwork of the upper face has been stained and mockpointed (Plate 92b).

Nos. 26–28 (consec.)

Old Burlington Street

Demolished

The sites of these three very similar houses were leased in the autumn and winter of 1719 to Charles Dartiquenave, 'epicure and humorist' (ref. 241) and a member of the circle of Burlington's friends. (ref. 324) Dartiquenave was responsible for the erection of the three houses and himself lived in No. 27 from 1723 until his death in 1737. Some joiner's accounts survive for work done in 1721–2 by John Tufnell, costing some £318, £402 and £315 for Nos. 26–28 respectively. They show that Dartiquenave, who was Paymaster of Works, made use of the services of other officers of the Board of Works, as the final payment to Tufnell in August 1722 was witnessed by Nicholas Dubois, Master Mason, and his deputy James Home, who measured the work. (ref. 325) Dubois, Home and Tufnell also occur in connexion with the building of Nos. 4 and 7 Cork Street, and Dubois himself shortly afterwards was an early occupant of No. 15 Old Burlington Street.

On either side of Dartiquenave, the first occupant of No. 26 was the Dowager Lady Romney, widow of the first Baron, and the first occupant of No. 28 Mrs. Elizabeth Neville.

Figure 92: Nos. 25–34 (consec.) Old Burlington Street, elevations and plans. Elevations collated from various sources, plan based on a drawing of c. 1773 in the Chatsworth MSS.

All three houses were demolished in 1959–60.

Architectural Description

These were typical carpenter's houses of their period, with brick front, back and party walls, and all the internal divisions formed by panelled partitions (fig. 92). A survey plan of about 1773, now at Chatsworth, (ref. 326) shows that the houses had similar plans, mirrored so that Nos. 26 and 27 shared chimney-stacks in the party walls, and Nos. 27 and 28 had paired doorways. In each house the ground floor was arranged with an entrance passage leading to a dog-legged staircase at the back. At the side of the passage was a large front room, with two windows to the street and a chimney-breast centred in the party wall. The back room had a corner chimney-breast against the front room, and in the back wall was one window and a door to the wing. In Nos. 26 and 27 the wing contained a service stair and a small closet with a corner fireplace, but in No. 27 it was given over to one room. The survey plan at Chatsworth shows that No. 26 had a larger back wing than its neighbours, although this extra length may have been an addition made only to the ground storey to provide a small room beyond the closet, perhaps a dressing-room with three cupboards. In all three houses the basements extended up to the line of the back wall of the wings, containing a large cellar, a privy, and a small lobby leading to the main staircase, all having doorways to the small back area. Behind each house was a long garden, those at Nos. 27 and 28 having a wall with a doorway to Cork Street, and a privy in the far corner. When first built, each house contained a basement, three storeys, and a roof garret.

Although an attic storey had been added to Nos. 26 and 27, the fronts were originally uniform, being three storeys high and three windows wide. They were built to a simple design in stock brick dressed with stone, used for the doorcase, the first-floor bandcourse, and the crowning cornice which was of unusually generous girth. The windows were set in plain openings, with stone sills and flat arches of gauged brickwork, except in the basement where the arches were segmental. The front slope of the mansard at No. 28 contained three segmental-headed dormers, probably original. Each house had a stone doorcase, composed of a moulded architrave flanked by plain jambs, with scroll-consoles supporting a cornicehood. The tall opening contained an eightpanelled door and an oblong fanlight.

The joiner's accounts for finishing the interiors show that there was nothing to distinguish these houses from many others built about the same time.

Notes taken in 1950 show that the entrance passage of No. 28 was lined with raised-andfielded panelling in ovolo-moulded framing, finished with a moulded dado-rail and a boxcornice of generous girth. The staircase was of dog-legged pattern, the flights railed in with a moulded oak handrail resting on fluted Doric column newels and balusters, turned with tapering shafts below urn-shaped heads, arranged three to each tread. The cut strings had an architrave face and were overlaid with finely carved brackets below the return nosings of the treads. From the second floor to the third, the stairs were finished with closed strings, and the balusters were shorter versions of those below. The staircase walls, up to the second-floor landing, were fully panelled.

The ground-floor front room had been altered and redecorated, probably in the early nineteenth century. Here, possibly, was a dentilled cornice referred to in the accounts. The back room retained its original lining of raised-and-fielded panelling, finished with a box-cornice. The angle fireplace was furnished with a flat architrave chimneypiece of stone, the lintel having quadrantcurved corners to the opening. The first-floor rooms were lined with raised-and-fielded panelling, finished with a generous box-cornice. The sixpanelled doors and three-panelled window shutters had survived, but the sashes with their heavy bars of 'right wainscot' had gone. The rooms on the second floor were lined with plain panelling in ovolo-moulded framing, finished with a simple coved cornice mentioned in the accounts.

No. 29 Old Burlington Street: Field-Marshal Wade's House

Demolished

The small palazzo designed by Lord Burlington in 1723 for General (later Field-Marshal) George Wade was unique among the buildings on the estate. This was so both of its disposition, and of its direct (and evidently unacknowledged) reproduction of an elevational design by Palladio. Despite the fact that it had been considerably altered and maltreated, its demolition in 1935, without full records being taken, created an unfillable gap in the architectural history of the area. That it was at no time fully illustrated was probably due in part to its presenting only a back front to the street in which it was situated while the façade was turned towards the originally unbuilt side of Cork Street.

Before attempting to describe this building, it is worth quoting the observations made by Ralph in 1734. 'General Wade's house . . . is a structure, which tho' small, and little taken notice of, is one of the best things among the new buildings: the general design, or plan, is intirely chaste and simple; and yet the execution is pompous and expensive: indeed the whole house is one continued cluster of ornament, and yet there is no body can say there is too much, or that he desires to have any part remov'd out of the way: let me add, 'tis the only fabrick in miniature I ever saw, where decorations were perfectly proportion'd to the space they were to fill, and did not by their multiplicity, or some other mistake, incumber the whole.' (ref. 327)

Ralph, although referring to 'the whole house', presumably meant to praise only the exterior, for he cannot have found much virtue in the planning. Horace Walpole, who usually admired Burlington's architecture, was scathing on this aspect. In a letter to George Montagu, dated 18 May 1748, he wrote 'I went yesterday to see marshal Wade's house, which is selling by auction: it is worse contrived on the inside than is conceivable, all to humour the beauty of the front. My lord Chesterfield said, that to be sure he could not live in it, but intended to take the house over against it to look at it. It is literally true, that all the direction he gave my lord Burlington was to have a place for a large cartoon of Rubens that he had bought in Flanders; but my lord found it necessary to have so many correspondent doors, that there was no room at last for the picture; and the marshal was forced to sell the picture to my father: it is now at Houghton'. (ref. 328)

Walpole's words support the inference from Burlington's inscription 'for Gen (ref. 1) Wade/London', on the elevational drawing of the house (ref. 329) (Plate 82a), that it was intended specifically for Wade's occupation. Burlington's admirer, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, who visited him in London in 1727, praises his observance here of the principle that the Doric order may be used in a house 'intended for a military man . . . because antiently Temples and monuments consecrated to Heroes were of this order'. (ref. 330) Wade seems to have been sufficiently a man of taste to appreciate Burlington's aims. His name occurs among the subscribers to architectural works in the 1720's, he was (like a number of Burlington's associates) a subscriber to Gay's Poems in 1720, and, like Burlington himself, a Governor of the Royal Academy of Music. (ref. 331)

His taste in paintings comprehended Claude as well as Rubens, (ref. 332) and Vertue mentions a fine illuminated prayer-book of Queen Margaret of Scotland which Wade had possessed and presented to Lord Burlington. (ref. 333) Burlington's remission of any rent for the house during his own lifetime (ref. 334) was thus no doubt an act of friendship or admiration, rather than an inducement to take an awkwardly planned house. Uncomfortable or not, Wade retained it from 1725 (when he moved from Warwick Street) until his death in 1748, having bought the freehold from the Pollen family in 1736. (ref. 335)

Nothing is known of the actual building of the house, or whether it was by Burlington's own workmen. Wade's lease ran from Lady Day 1725, but was not executed until January 1729/30. (ref. 334)

The graphic evidence relating to the house appears to be limited to the following sources. In the Burlington-Devonshire Collection in the Library of the Royal Institute of British Architects are three drawings by Flitcroft, giving plans of the ground and first floors, and an elevation of the principal front facing west towards Cork Street (ref. 336) (Plate 82). This elevation derives from a design by Andrea Palladio in the same collection (ref. 337) (Plate 84a). Colin Campbell's version of this design is given on plate 10 in the third volume of Vitruvius Britannicus together with groundand first-floor plans that differ in several ways from those drawn by Flitcroft, but correspond fairly closely with a plan of about 1773, now at Chatsworth (ref. 326) (Plate 83, fig. 92). Finally there are survey plans of the basement and ground storey, taken in August 1935 with a measured outline elevation of the street front, and a few photographs of both fronts (ref. 338) (Plates 80, 84b). These photographs show that the garden (west) front accorded more closely with Palladio and Flitcroft than with Campbell. The plan seems to have been derived from a study of the plans of Palladio's Vicentine palaces, given in the Quattro Libri. The house was two rooms deep and the ground-floor plan was repeated on the principal floor. On the street front (east) was a hall or ante-room, 12 feet wide and 18 feet deep, between two rooms, each 18 feet square. On the garden front (west) was a large hall or saloon, 30 feet wide and 20 feet deep, flanked on the north and on the south by small square rooms (little more than closets). Behind each small room was a staircase, the north square and the south circular. Unless top lighting was provided to supplement the meagre light from the windows, almost obscured by the side walls of the adjacent houses, both staircases must have been very dark.

The Chatsworth survey shows a wide area to the west of the house, giving light and air to the basement, and access to a square cross-vaulted cellar, possibly the General's cold bath, placed on the east-west axis below the garden or, more probably, court-yard. This was bounded by a wall to Cork Street, with a central gateway between massive piers. The dimensions of this gateway correspond almost exactly with those of the design by Burlington, delineated by Flitcroft and published on plate 59 in Kent's Inigo Jones, volume 1 (Plate 85a). This depicts an arch of rusticated and vermiculated masonry, surmounted by a pedestal attic ornamented with festooned oak garlands and flanked by consoles. Against each end of the garden wall was a square pavilion of one room, that to the north containing a fireplace and possibly serving as a porter's lodge.

The rooms are not named on any of the plans, but living accommodation was probably limited to the whole of the principal storey, the street-front rooms on the ground storey, and a chamber storey on the same front. The presence of windows in the middle of each side wall suggests that the house was designed to be fully insular. As built, however, it was separated from its neighbours by gaps only 1 foot 3 inches wide, with the street front recessed some 13 feet from the general frontage line, and the garden front projecting some 11 feet west of the main back wall of No. 30, on the south side.

Before passing on to the exterior of the house, it is desirable to consider the earlier or alternative plans drawn by Flitcroft (Plate 82b, 82c). The firstfloor plan generally resembles Campbell's (Plate 83), but the ante-room between the east front rooms is wider, and there is a staircase in the compartment north of the saloon. The important differences are in the ground storey, where the wide middle aperture in each fivebay front opens to a recessed porch. Both porches have side doors giving direct access to the flanking rooms, and a door between side-lights opens to an oblong hall which forms the core of the plan. On either side of the east (street front) porch is a large square room, the south one evidently intended for a kitchen, and both have doors into the hall. The corresponding squares on the west (garden) front are each divided into a half (an oblong room) and two quarters (a closet and a staircase). The long axis of the north room lies north-south, and the windowless closet is south of the square staircase compartment. The south oblong room has an east-west axis, the closet in the south—west angle has a window to the garden, and the staircase behind it is circular. It will be noticed that neither stair can be reached from the hall without passing through at least one room.

Reference must also be made to a plan and elevation for a house designed by Burlington, described as 'a variation of the design for General Wade's house'. (ref. 339) The plan certainly has several features in common with the principal storey of Wade's house, but the elevation is very different. This design, moreover, is for a larger site.

Photographs, and the measured outline elevation, show that the street front in its final state was three storeys high, with five widely spaced windows in the principal and chamber storeys. From the middle of the ground storey projected a large vestibule, internally circular and externally a semi-circle continued with straight sides. This stucco-faced addition, its style suggestive of Samuel Wyatt, had a central door and flanking windows placed in three equal bays, defined by plain-shafted Ionic pilasters supporting a plain frieze and dentilled cornice. Above this was a blocking-course from which rose a half saucerdome. The narrow return faces, linking the semirotunda to the house front, each contained a niche and an oblong panel below the entablature, above which was an attic pedestal, its front face serving as a stop for the half saucer-dome. This vestibule did much to relieve the severity of the front, which had only an unmoulded pedestal at firstfloor level, and a plain bandcourse above the second-floor windows, the latter perhaps replacing a crowning cornice. The steep-faced garret storey, partly concealed by an open balustrade, may have been added when the vestibule was built, and the original brickwork was probably stuccoed over at the same time.

For the garden front, facing west towards Cork Street, Lord Burlington adopted a design by Palladio. (ref. 337) This was faithfully interpreted and finely executed in stone, although to a smaller scale than Palladio must have intended. Basically, the composition was one of five bays and two storeys, the lower arcaded and the upper dressed with a Doric order, recalling Sanmicheli's Palazzo Pompei at Verona (begun in 1531). The groundstorey arcade was formed of smooth-faced chamfer-jointed stone courses, the arches springing from a plain impost and having slightly projecting keystones. Originally, it seems that these arches, excepting the wide middle one, were closed with plain ashlar walling up to the continued impost, and windows were set in the lunettes, whereas Palladio's design has simple tabernacle-framed windows below solid tympana. The ground storey was finished with a plain bandcourse, although Palladio shows a cornice. The wall face of the principal storey, also treated as an arcade of smooth-faced chamferjointed courses, was slightly recessed and dressed with an applied Doric order of plain-shafted pilasters, placed on pedestals and supporting an unbroken entablature. The pedestals were returned into each bay and continued below each window with a blind balustrade Each window aperture, except the centre, was dressed with a moulded architrave and a cornice, the last continuing the arcade impost. In the wide middle bay was a Venetian window, with plainshafted Doric columns between the three lights. Palladio, Flitcroft and Campbell all show metopes alternately of bucranea and paterae between the triglyphs of the crowning entablature. Chambers remarks on the great projection of these metopes, which he censures as a fault. (ref. 340) They had disappeared by the time the building was demolished, and it is probable that they were applied.

No records were made of the interior at the time of demolition, but it is obvious from the survey plans of 1935 that many changes had by then been made. One may surmise that the westfront saloon would have been a noble room, having a Venetian window between two double-square windows in one long wall, three respondent features in the other, doors at either end of each lateral wall, and presumably, a deep cove rising to the ceiling. Like the saloon at Burlington House, this room may have been for summer use, unless the two recesses opposite the windows were fireplaces. The survey shows that the corresponding room on the ground storey had been divided by a corridor leading to the later buildings fronting to Cork Street, and that a new staircase had been constructed in the original front hall.

It may be observed that while Burlington must be blamed for inflicting late sixteenthcentury Italian standards of planning on Wade, and for producing an extremely uninteresting design for the street front, the considerable beauty of the garden front was entirely due to his use of Palladio's design. This does not appear from Campbell's fulsome note on the building, when he describes 'this beautiful Design' as 'the Invention of the Right Honourable the Earl of Burlington, who is not only a great Patron of all Arts, but the first Architect'. If, as Fiske Kimball has suggested, (ref. 341) Campbell made his engraving directly from Palladio's drawing, altering some details in the process, then his ascription is a sycophantic lie. This engraving, however, departs from Palladio and the building by showing vermiculated stonework for the piers and voussoirsof the ground-storey arcade, and a swagged cartouche in each tympanum. It seems probable, therefore, that Campbell worked from an 'improved' copy of Flitcroft's drawing, and that the vermiculation represents the extent of Burlington's 'invention'.

Contemporary English opinion appears to have accepted Burlington's direct authorship. It may be noted, however, that Burlington's Venetian admirer, Count Algarotti, writing to him from Berlin in 1751, appears to regard the Palladian derivation as an acknowledged fact. His letter reported the esteem in which Burlington's architecture was held at the court of Frederick the Great and his own enthusiastic recommendation of Burlington's works when dining with the King. He took the opportunity to speak of 'Burlington House, Chiswick, the Egyptian Hall at York, the Thermae which you, My Lord, have had engraved, and the façade of Palladio which you have had executed for General Wade's house'. (ref. 342) (fn. a)

A version of this celebrated house, considerably modified but with about the same length of frontage, was thereupon erected by Frederick the Great in Potsdam, as the house later numbered 2 Blücherplatz. Algarotti delivered Me plan de la maison de M. Wade', which a 'M. Villiers' had sent him, to Frederick in April 1752. (ref. 343) The house was erected in 1755, to the design of Andreas Krüger, and seems to have been as inconveniently planned as its prototype was reputed to be. (ref. 344) It was severely damaged during the war of 1939–45 and was demolished in 1957 or 1958. (ref. 345)

In addition, a well-known replica was built by John Smyth in Dublin in 1758 as the Provost's House of Trinity College. (ref. 346) This adheres closely to the Campbell engraving, which was probably the source.

On Wade's death his house was acquired by Richard Arundell, the friend of Burlington and the first occupant of No. 34 Old Burlington Street, who lived here until his death in 1759 when his widow continued in occupation until her death in 1769. She left it, with her other property, in trust for her nephew, the second Viscount Galway. (ref. 347) The next occupant, however, was the eleventh Earl of Clanricarde, from 1770 until 1777, followed for a year or so by the fourth Viscount Galway. From 1778 until 1785 the house was rated to Sir Charles Asgill, who during this period served under a subsequent occupant of the house, the first Marquess Cornwallis, against the American rebels and was captured at Yorktown. (ref. 348) He was succeeded by Sir John Call, the military engineer, until the latter's death in 1801. Call was followed by the first Marquess Cornwallis until his death in 1805 and he by the second Marquess (ref. 241) who died here in 1823.

Most of the occupants of the house thus seem to have found it comfortable enough to retain until their death. It is not known which of them added the vestibule on the Old Burlington Street front or the additional attic storey: the former is shown on Horwood's map of 1792 and the latter is known to have been in existence by 1836. (ref. 112)

Lord Cornwallis's death in 1823 brought to an end the private ownership of the house. It was then acquired for use as the Burlington Hotel (evidently with its chief entrance in Cork Street) by Atkinson Morley, who in 1836 also took No. 30 for the same purpose. On Cork Street the 1819 edition of Horwood's map shows only two small buildings, as in 1773. Lord Cornwallis had perhaps constructed something more substantial here by 1821. (ref. 24) In 1826 the 'New Burlington Hotel in Cork-street' was said to conceal 'in some measure' from public view the garden façade of the house. (ref. 349) By 1836 a four-storeyed building with roof garrets occupied the whole of the Cork Street frontage and other buildings between it and Wade's old house left only small yards where the garden had been. (ref. 112) In 1870 H. B. Wheatley was unaware that the famous façade still survived, fronting the later buildings at the back. (ref. 350)

Nos. 29 and 30 continued to be used as an hotel, together with the Cork Street buildings, until the 1930's. Among its notable residents had been Florence Nightingale. She had first come with her family to take rooms for the season in 1842, and later at the height of her fame in 1857 made it the 'little War Office' where she directed the movement for the reform of the Army medical services. The 'dingy old Burlington' had the merit of a central situation but its staff resisted with some success her efforts to improve the ventilation and sanitary arrangements. The death of Sidney Herbert seems to have rendered the hotel's associations disagreeable to Miss Nightingale who removed in the autumn of 1861. (ref. 351) A later distinguished resident was Cecil Rhodes, who after his election as Prime Minister of the Cape in 1890 made his London home in this 'discreet hotel of irreproachable standing'. Here 'the world flocked to see him and do business with him.' (ref. 352)

In April 1932 it was announced that the premises would be offered for sale by auction (ref. 353) but it was not until February 1935 that a company was formed for the acquisition of Burlington Hotels Limited, then in liquidation. (ref. 354) The sale of the freehold 'recently', for over £100,000, was announced in July. (ref. 355) In the same month the London County Council gave permission for the erection of a block of flats above ground-floor shops by Gordon Jeeves for C. R. Anson of E. D. Winn and Company. (ref. 356) The old buildings were demolished in the autumn of 1935, when an 'obituary' of General Wade's house was published in The Architect and Building News. (ref. 357) The new building, consisting mainly of one-room service flats and known as the St. Regis, was erected in 1936, with entrances from Cork Street and Old Burlington Street. An application for permission to alter the upper floors for offices in May 1938 was refused by the London County Council, but in 1947 they were converted for occupation by the Ministry of Works as offices, and in 1950 the former restaurant on the ground floor was converted into offices and showrooms for White Allom, Limited, decorators. (ref. 356)

No. 30 Old Burlington Street

Demolished

This large house was noteworthy for its splendid interior, and for the fact that the street front, at least, was designed by Lord Burlington. The narrow face of the party wall against No. 31 survives with short sections of the mouldings that dressed the front of No. 30. This is the sole remnant of Lord Burlington's designing on the estate (Plate 81a).

Like General Wade's house, No. 30 was designed for an Irishman, although here the intending occupant never took possession of the house. This was Algernon Coote, sixth Earl of Mountrath, who is named among 'tenants' on the estate in March 1720/21, (ref. 358) presumably on the strength of some agreement preparatory to a lease. In February 1717/18 he had served on the committee of the House of Commons which reported favourably on Burlington's Bill for authority to grant building leases on this estate (ref. 359) and in 1719 he was thought capable of securing an election to the Irish Parliament by his influence with Burlington. (ref. 360) Burlington's design for him is undated but may be assumed to have been earlier than that for General Wade as in 1722 Mountrath took a house in St. James's Square, where he remained until 1732. (ref. 315) In July 1724 he was paid some £1200 by Burlington's lawyer Jabez Collier and later he and the Countess were paid smaller sums by Collier: (ref. 361) it is not known whether this was related to any repayment of money paid by Mountrath for the house. About this time the intending occupant was William Capel, third Earl of Essex, and it was to him that the lease was made. It was back-dated in September 1719 and ran for 61 years from Michaelmas in that year, like most of the leases in the street. (ref. 362) Essex in turn, however, decided not to take the house, conceivably because of the death of his first wife in January 1723/4. No. 30 appears, unoccupied, in the ratebook for 1724, when it doubtless existed only in carcase.

It was not until May 1725 that the first occupant acquired the house, by the assignment of Lord Essex's lease to Michael Newton, esquire, of Barr's Court, Gloucestershire, (ref. 363) shortly to become Sir Michael Newton, K.B., and later fourth baronet. He paid Lord Essex £2200 for his lease of the house, and spent a further £1151 6s. 9d. 'towards fitting up the same'. (ref. 364) It was thus presumably Sir Michael who was responsible for the decorative character of the interior, and the spandrels of the staircase ceiling celebrated his membership of the Order of the Bath. Like previous intending occupants Sir Michael was a man of taste, a Director of the Opera and a subscriber to architectural publications. Robert Morris dedicated to him his Lectures on Architecture of 1734. In that year Sir Michael came into possession of Culverthorpe Hall, Lincolnshire, and began embellishments there probably influenced by Kent's work at Holkham, (ref. 365) to whose owner, the Earl of Leicester, and to his brother Robert Coke (then acquiring No. 14 Savile Row) Sir Michael was uncle, friend and mentor. The craftsmen employed at the Old Burlington Street house are not known. The workmanship of the staircase, however, is very like that at No. 9 Clifford Street, although it may be noted that the carver, John Boson, who took the house at the northern end of Savile Row in 1734, carved a chimneypiece for Culverthorpe in the following year. (ref. 366)

Sir Michael lived here until his death in 1743. During this period a close adaptation of the façade, with a very similar length of frontage to No. 30, was used for a street house in Dublin, which still survives as No. 9 Henrietta Street. The design for No. 30 is not known to have been engraved or published, but personal connexions may account for the derivation. No. 9 Henrietta Street is thought to have been built about 1731 by Richard Cassel(s) for Thomas Carter, Alaster of the Rolls. (ref. 367) Carter had been a friend or dependant of Burlington's with a common acquaintance in the painter Charles Jervas, and also perhaps in Lord Mountrath. (ref. 368) Another line of personal connexion may have been through Sir Gustavus Hume of County Fermanagh, who was responsible for bringing Cassels to Ireland in about 1727. (ref. 369) Sir Gustavus had been a prospective tenant on the Burlington estate about 1721 (ref. 370) and had perhaps communicated to his architect a surviving interest in the houses built there.

The occupants succeeding Sir Michael retained the house for lengthy tenancies, but few alterations seem to have been made until the 1830's. In 1832–3 when the house was occupied by Sir Thomas Neave the rating was considerably increased and it was perhaps at this time that the fourth storey which existed by 1836 (ref. 112) was added. In 1836 the private occupation of the house came to an end when it was taken by Atkinson Morley to be used as the Burlington Hotel together with No. 29. Morley was perhaps responsible for the five-storeyed building occupying the Cork Street frontage in 1836. (ref. 112) The subsequent history of the house was common to No. 29 and like that house it was demolished in 1935. Unlike No. 29, considerable parts of the interior survive, though widely dispersed.

A well-finished presentation by Flitcroft of Burlington's design for the front is in the Library of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ref. 371) (Plate 85b). It is inscribed in Burlington's hand 'for Ld Montrath / London' and depicts a detached house with a front of three storeys, five windows wide, presumably intended to be executed in brick with stone dressings. The chief ornamental feature is the central doorway, nearly identical with one designed by Webb and published in Kent's Inigo Jones. (ref. 372) The straight-headed opening is flanked by engaged Ionic columns supporting a triangular pediment, the column shafts being broken by plain blocks, and the architrave, pulvino-frieze and cornice by stepped and projecting voussoirs flanking a prominent keystone of icicle-work. The ground-storey windows, two evenly spaced on each side of the doorway, are underlined by a plain sill-band, above a plinth with rusticated quoins at either end. Each windowopening is a double-square and is dressed with an eared architrave broken by a triple keystone. The upper stage of the front contains two tiers of five windows, those of the principal storey rising from a plain pedestal. This is broken by a blind balustrade beneath the central window, which is heightened by a round-arched head and dressed with Ionic plain-shafted pilasters, entablature blocks, and a moulded archivolt. The flanking windows are proportioned to a double-square and are dressed with moulded architraves, eared at the heads and surmounted by pulvino-friezes and cornices. The chamber-storey windows are almost square and are framed with moulded architraves, broken in at the sides. The front was designed to be finished with a simple cornice and a blocking-course, below a gently sloping hipped roof without dormers.

Various photographs, an outline measured elevation made in 1935, and the narrow strip of the front which survives against No. 31, all show that Burlington's design was altered slightly in the execution, the principal change being in the use of a full entablature to crown the front, having a moulded architrave, a pulvino-frieze, and a modillioned cornice, returned at each end on the side walls (Plates 80, 81a, fig. 92). Later alterations to the front included enlarging the chamber-storey windows by lowering the sills, adding a plain attic storey, and covering the original brick face with stucco, coursed to resemble stonework. Two lead rain-water pipes with box heads, placed between each end pair of windows and thus impairing the rhythm of the composition, were probably original.

The Chatsworth plan of the ground floor (fig. 92) shows that this house was arranged on perfectly orthodox lines, a factor which probably saved it from the extensive changes that were made to its neighbour on the north, General Wade's house. Discounting the later additions, the house was an oblong with a street frontage of 56 feet and a depth of 47 feet, a substantial wall dividing the front and back ranges of rooms. The front range was 18 feet deep and in the middle was the entrance hall, 11 feet wide, having on its north side a three-bay colonnade opening to the great staircase, and in its south wall two doors leading to a room which was 21 feet wide and had two windows towards the street. At the west end of the hall, beyond a Venetian screen, was a small lobby with a door opening to the south back room, 21 feet wide and 24 feet deep, with two windows to the garden. The north back room was only 18 feet deep, allowing space for a passage leading from the screened lobby to a service staircase, to the west of which was an ante-room leading to a wing extending westwards. This wing, probably of one storey, contained a gallery-like room having three windows looking south over the garden. At its west end was a wide opening leading to two cabinet rooms, the first having an apse opening to the second, which had a pilastered feature on the end wall. The layout of this wing suggests that it was designed to house an art collection.

It is probable that the principal floor was planned on similar lines to the ground storey, but without the north-west wing.

Under the garden there were large cellars, lit from the back basement area, and projecting centrally from the garden wall to Cork Street were two privies, placed back to back and screened from the house by an alcove or garden seat.

The outstanding feature of the interior was the great staircase, which is well illustrated in Francis Lenygon's Decoration in England from 1660 to 1770 (ref. 373) (Plates 86, 87). The oblong compartment was two storeys high, with windows towards the street in the long east wall, and superimposed colonnades of three equal bays at the south end forming screens to the entrance hall and firstfloor landing. Starting within the west bay of the ground-storey colonnade, the stair rose in three easy flights against the west, north and east walls, to finish in the east bay of the upper colonnade. The columns and pilaster responds of the colonnades were of wood, the lower order being Ionic, with plain shafts and diagonally voluted capitals. The lower entablature, of plaster, consisted of a highly enriched architrave, a frieze modelled with lion-masks flanked by acanthus buds alternating with paired acanthus-leaf scrolls, and a narrow cornice highly enriched and featuring a Vitruvian scroll on the fascia of the corona. This entablature was continued round the walls of the compartment, above a plain wall face. The columns of the upper screen were Composite with fluted and cabled shafts, and the entablature was appropriately enriched with a frieze decoration of female masks festooned with husks and ribbons, these being held in the mouths of grotesque hounds merging into acanthus scrolls. The walls of the principal stage of the compartment were adorned with a variety of tabernacle-frames, resembling woodwork but presumably of plaster. There were three on the north wall, opposite the colonnade, the middle one being a splendid composition of engaged Composite columns, small versions of those in the colonnade, resting on rich scroll-consoles and supporting a pedimented entablature. A niche within the tabernacle contained a statue of a goddess holding a wreath, and on the triangular pediment were reclining putti. The side frames resembled doorcases, consisting of an enriched architrave surmounted by a cyma frieze decorated with acanthus scrolls, and a dentilled cornice. Each frame rested on a sill, decorated with a Vitruvian scroll and broken centrally by a console-bracket flanked by cornucopia-like scrolls of acanthus. Over each side tabernacle was an oblong panel, framed in an eggand-dart moulding and containing a relief composed of a husk garland festooned to support a large scallop-shell. There were two tabernacles on each long wall, those on the east framing the windows. Each was formed of an enriched architrave, scrolled at the feet, resting on a Vitruvianscrolled sill supported by scroll-consoles. Above the head of each architrave was a broken triangular pediment, resting on consoles. The cornice of the great entablature was highly enriched and had bracket modillions; the upper members were returned to frame the compartments, a large oval and four spandrels, into which the ceiling was divided. The frame of the oval was modelled with a flowered guilloche, but the short ribs dividing the spandrels had fretted soffits. Apart from a rich chandelier-boss, the central oval was plain, but the spandrels were modelled with high relief decoration, each containing a cartouche with the star of the Order of the Bath, framed with scrolls and acanthus leaves, and flanked by garlands that trailed across large cornucopiae.

The massive wooden balustrading of the staircase has been re-used at Buxted Park, Sussex. (ref. 374) It is virtually of the same design and workmanship as that on the branching stair at No. 9 Clifford Street, and both belong to a neo-Palladian group that have a common prototype in the 'Italian' staircase at Coleshill, at that time revered as a work of Inigo Jones. This balustrade is composed of stout vase-profiled balusters, evenly spaced at two to each broad tread, housed into a deep string treated as an entablature, and a broad handrail extending between newels. The handrail is moulded to match the pedestal cornice-capping. Many of the mouldings are enriched with carvings of formal ornaments, the pulvino-frieze of the string being entirely carved with a wide laurel garland cross-banded with ribbons. Every baluster is carved with flower-and-dart on the base moulding, ball ornament on the waist, beads on the necking, and egg-and-dart on the capital, the shaft belly being enriched with cabled flutes. This wealth of ornamentation is completed by the pendants of oak leaves and ribbons set in the sunk panels of the pedestal-newel dies.

At Buxted, the new staircase was skilfully designed by the late Basil Ionides to incorporate the balustrading and upper screen of Composite columns from the staircase described above. There, however, it was necessary to reverse the going, so that the first flight is on the right and the return is on the left. The colonnade has been used on the first floor, with a narrow central intercolumniation to correspond with the narrow well of the stair. It was also necessary to provide a new pedestal-newel at the foot of the first flight, and this is differentiated from the originals by using a drapery festoon in each die panel.

The splendour of the great staircase was matched by the rich decoration of the principal rooms. One of the finest of these is stated to be now in the museum at Memphis, Tennessee. (ref. 375) Another room, probably from this house and now at Godmersham Park, Kent, (ref. 376) has a focal feature in the splendid continued chimneypiece designed in the style of Jones and Webb, and its panelling of painted deal recalls, in a simple fashion, that in the great suite at Wilton. The entrance hall probably contributed the Ionic Venetian screen now at Godmersham, and a doorcase from the same source is in the staircase hall at Buxted, a fine example crowned with a pediment on which are placed reclining putti, recalling those on the staircase tabernacle described above.

Nos. 31 and 32 Old Burlington Street and No. 3–5 Burlington Gardens

The building now numbered 3–5 Burlington Gardens occupies the site and contains some of the external fabric of the southerly pair (formerly numbered 33 and 34) of a row of four houses fronting Old Burlington Street.

These four houses, although leased by deeds bearing dates between September 1719 and March 1725/6 and constructed over a period from 1718 to 1723, were of a unified design which may be attributed to Colin Campbell's authorship. They were built from south to north and the more southerly pair, Nos. 33 and 34, were among the earlier houses on the estate to be ready for occupation, in 1720. The first or early occupants of Nos. 31–33 were connected by friendship or family relation with Burlington's associate, Richard Arundell, for whom No. 34 was built.

The most northerly of the four, No. 31, which has survived with the least alteration, was first occupied in 1724 by the lessee, Sir William Stapleton, baronet, (ref. 24) who in April of that year mortgaged it, to secure £2000, to the mason, Edward Strong, junior (ref. 377) (who was associated in his trade with two other masons occurring in the history of Burlington House and estate, Christopher Cass and Edward Tufnell). (ref. 378) Strong was a subscriber to Campbell's, Leoni's and Gibbs's books of architecture, and may have been associated with the building of the house. In the following year, however, Sir William assigned his lease for £3600 to John, Lord Hervey, (ref. 379) who lived in the house from October of that year (ref. 380) until 1730. In November 1730 Hervey assigned his lease to his great friend Stephen Fox, later first Earl of Ilchester, (ref. 381) who in 1732 bought the freehold from the Pollen family (ref. 382) and lived here until his death in 1776. The Fox-Strangways family still owns the freehold. On entering the house Fox had evidently had it embellished, perhaps with the fine wainscoting still existing on the ground floor. In December 1731 Lord Hervey wrote to Fox, who was then out of London, that he had called on his friend Richard Arundell at No. 34, 'and being so near your house called in to see it. It is quite finished, and looks the smuggest [sic], sprucest, cheerfulest thing I ever saw. Nothing can improve it but a piece of moveable goods of my acquaintance, which I expect home with more impatience than I can tell you'. (ref. 383)

The Ilchester family remained here until the 1860's, and from 1867 the house was occupied by the second Viscount and Lady Lismore, the latter dying here in 1900. In 1909 the house was taken by Messrs. Lenygon (later Lenygon and Morant) as a show-room for antique furnishings, until 1953. (ref. 115)

The present attic storey was added after 1836. (ref. 112)

No. 32 was leased by Burlington to his architect, Colin Campbell, the lease bearing the most common date in this street, in September 1719. (ref. 384) It would appear, however, that in the summer of 1718 Alexander Pope had very seriously considered taking the site for a house to be built under Campbell's supervision. He was evidently considering it in June (ref. 385) and had perhaps already had it in mind in February. (ref. 386) In August, however, Lord Bathurst wrote to dissuade him from building his 'palazzotto at London' as such undertakings were 'apt to melt money'. (ref. 387) In October Pope wrote to Burlington from Bathurst's house at Cirencester, giving the expense of Campbell's requirements as his reason for hesitating to build:

'I never mentioned to yr Lordship the Affair of my Building during yr Amusements in the Country, designing to speak of it at yr return to towne. But I would not longer now defer doing it, that you may not think me so poetical as not to know my own mind & inclination, which I faithfully assure you (my Lord) is to be obliged to you, & to be yours by as many titles as I can. I therefore beg you to know, I have Piqued myself upon being your Tenant in that piece of ground behind Burlington house (which is the Situation I am fond of to ye last degree) & that nothing hindered my building there this Sumer, but finding [upon ye exactest enquiry, interlined] ye expence Mr. Campbell's Proposal would have put me to, to be 200 pound above wt I am pretty well assured I can build the same thing for. I promise you, my Lord, to build on ye same Plan & Front with Ld Warwick's [No. 33 Old Burlington Street], so as not to clash with any regular design; & I beg you to believe me always in earnest in whatsoever I speak to yr Lordship.' (ref. 388)

By the following February, 1719, Pope had finally abandoned the idea and wrote to Burlington to confirm what he had already told him, 'That I readily resign the piece of ground intended for me, as not being yet prepared to build, & absolutely unwilling to retard the progress of ye rest who are. I beg leave also to assure you, My Lord, that I think the Obligation as fully & strongly layd upon me, as if I had embraced the Favor you designed me.' (ref. 389)

At this time Pope was at work on his translation of Homer, and, as Professor Sherburn pointed out, (ref. 390) it may be that very rough sketch plans for a three-storeyed street house on a verso page in the Homer manuscript (ref. 391) refer to the Burlington estate site. They represent what are very much a layman's rather than an architect's ideas of a house plan, with a large lobby and small back parlour on the ground floor, a very large dining-room and a very small library above, and on the second floor two bedrooms, one of which opened on to a 'balustrade' over a 'portico' on the garden front.

In the event, as has been seen, Campbell himself took the lease. He refers to the house as 'lately erected and built and now almost compleatly finished by me' in his will on 16 January 1721/ 1722. (ref. 392) He never lived in the house, which was first occupied, in that year, by Henry Pelham, one of the Lords of the Treasury, brother of the Duke of Newcastle, and himself later Prime Minister. As did many other residents on the estate, Pelham subscribed to a number of the fine architectural publications of the time. One of these was Kent's Inigo Jones of 1727, which illustrates on plates 63 and 66 a chimneypiece and ceiling here, designed by Kent (Plate 90), who was also to work for Pelham at Esher and in Arlington Street. Like his brother-in-law and 'very good friend' (ref. 393) at No. 34, Richard Arundell, Pelham was left objets d'art in Kent's will. (ref. 89) Like Arundell also, Pelham seems to have served on the committee of the House of Commons which reported favourably in 1734 on Burlington's Bill to authorize his building leases in Savile Row, Swallow Street and New Burlington Street. (ref. 394)

Pelham remained here until the end of 1732 when he leased the house, at £120 per annum, to another brother-in-law, Lord William Manners. (ref. 395) Lord William lived here until 1774, being assigned Campbell's lease by the latter's executor in 1738. (ref. 396)

From 1781 to his death in 1798 the house was occupied by the surgeon, John Gunning, and then by the diplomatist, Lord St. Helens, (ref. 241) until 1809.

From 1823 until 1857 the occupant was Samuel Cartwright, dentist, who 'did much to improve and elevate his profession' (ref. 241) and in the latter year made the house over to his son, also a dentist. (ref. 397)

The present attic storey was added after 1836. (ref. 112)

At No. 33 (now part of No. 3–5 Burlington Gardens) the site was already appropriated in 171 8, as appears from Pope's letter quoted above, to the seventh Earl of Warwick, Addison's dissolute stepson, and the ratebooks suggest that he occupied the house in 1720 until his premature death in August of the following year. The lease, dated September 1720, was, however, made to his mother, the Countess. (ref. 398) She succeeded him here until her own death in 1731, when her daughter Charlotte Addison continued in occupation until 1747. In her will (ref. 399) Lady Warwick left her estate, subject to certain eventualities and her daughter's life interest, to Richard Arundell of No. 34, 'as a mark of the friendship and esteem I had for my Lady Pembroke his Mother.'

In 1731, after Lady Warwick's death, an inventory of the house was taken. It gives no information about the architectural decoration of the interior but mentions four garrets, two chambers and a closet on the second floor, a library on either the second or first floor, a bed-chamber and a dining-room on the first floor, and a parlour and drawing-room on the ground floor. The furnishings were those usual for the period, with crimson silk curtains and crimson and blue upholstery in the dining-room, and yellow curtains, hangings and upholstery in the ground-floor rooms. The chairs and tables were of walnut or mahogany, with Indian chests on frames, inlaid cabinets, firescreens, and two large marble tables in walnut frames in the front parlour. Brilliancy was lent to the rooms by chimney-glasses, lookingglasses, glass sconces, and gilded woodwork. (ref. 400)

From 1780 to 1784 the house was occupied by John Dymoke, hereditary King's Champion, who had acted in this capacity at the coronation of George III. A later occupant was Count de Brühl, the Saxon ambassador, (ref. 241) who lived here from 1796 until his death in 1809. After occupation by a dentist and surgeon the house was bought, together with No. 34, in 1874, for use as the Bristol Hotel and Restaurant.

No. 34, the southernmost corner house, was the first of the four houses to be built, and already in August 1718 Colin Campbell was receiving the second of the payments as architect for which he had contracted with the intending occupant. (ref. 401) This was the Honourable Richard Arundell of Allerton Mauleverer, Yorkshire, a younger son of the second Lord Arundell of Trerice, Cornwall, by a widow of Sir Richard Mauleverer. His mother had remarried, after Lord Arundell's death, the eighth Earl of Pembroke.

Richard Arundell, a well-provided-for placeman as a relation of the Pelhams, was a close associate of the Burlingtonian circle. His election as Member of Parliament for Knaresborough was secured through Burlington's interest, (ref. 402) and he served on the committee of the Commons in 1734 which approved Burlington's Bill for authority to lay out Savile Row, Swallow Street and New Burlington Street: (ref. 394) he was made one of the trustees for the Earl and Countess of Burlington's property in their wills of 1750 and 1755. (ref. 403) It is evident that he had a certain interest in architecture. He subscribed to the architectural publications of Leoni, Kent and Ware, as well as to other publications of Burlington's proteges, was a 'great friend' of his half-brother, the 'architect' Earl of Pembroke, (ref. 404) and figures as an authority on that art in a convivial gathering at Houghton, in the company of his neighbours Lord Hervey and Stephen Fox. (ref. 405) In 1726 he became Surveyor General of Works, in succession to Sir Thomas Hewett, on improved and very favourable terms. His letter to Burlington announcing his recommendation to this post by Sir Robert Walpole testifies to the limitations of his own capacity and to his place in the Burlingtonian circle. 'Great Endeavours' had been used to obtain the Comptrollership of the Works, vacated by Vanbrugh's death, for Kent, but Walpole had given the post to Ripley, leaving Kent only the less remunerative prospect of Ripley's former post of Master Carpenter. Arundell now urged Burlington to use his influence with Kent to induce him to accept this: 'Yr Lordship must be sensible how Necessary Mr. Kent's being at the Board will be to me wch makes me now press, that you wou'd for my sake let him accept what's offer'd. They have made my Employment so good by adding 500 pds per An. to it, that its impossible for me to decline it & without Kent, that I can depend upon, it will not be very agreeable.' (ref. 406) Burlington contrived this 'favour' to Arundell, and Kent became Master Carpenter.

Kent caricatured Arundell's features, among others of Burlington's friends, in his sketchbooks, at Chatsworth, and left Arundell and his wife, Lady Frances, pictures and objets d'art in his will of 1743. (ref. 89) The lease of the site to Arundell, when it came to be made in 1726, was witnessed by Kent, (ref. 407) who illustrates his designs for a chimneypiece and an interior wall composition here on plates 63 and 67 of his Inigo Jones of 1727 (Plates 90b, 91a).

The friendly relationship of Arundell to Burlington is presumably evidenced in the belated commencement of the 61-year term and the foregoing of rent (apart from a peppercorn). The site as leased was unlike the others on this side of the street in that it did not run right back to the east side of Cork Street, but it extended well south of the actual building line on the Burlington Gardens frontage. The reason for the shorter east-to-west dimension of this site as leased is not known. The ground to the west, abutting on Cork Street, seems always to have been owned and occupied with No. 34, and by 1773 was the site of a porticoed garden house facing east. (ref. 326)

As has been seen, Arundell's house was well begun by the late summer of 1718, when the back part was up to the middle of the first-floor windows and the front 'only to the setting on of the same windows, for the stone work goes slowly'. The third payment was made to Campbell in September, and by May of the following year he was being paid for extra work, apparently making vaults on the Burlington Gardens frontage. (ref. 401)

Campbell charged Arundell five per cent for his services as architect supervising the work. (ref. 401) In September 1720 Arundell paid Campbell £1500. (ref. 408) This was perhaps for an assignment to him of some agreement respecting the site between Campbell and Burlington.

Some of the payments for work on the house were made by Arundell's mother, the Countess of Pembroke, until her death in 1721. (ref. 409)

Few of the workmen's names are known with certainty. The joiner's name was Lane, (ref. 410) probably the John Lane who worked with William Baverstock for Lord Burlington, and probably also identifiable with the Mr. Lane who acted as Campbell's 'builder' at Compton Place, Eastbourne. (ref. 411) In August and September 1720 payments were made to him and to a carver, ironmonger, plasterer, plumber and locksmith, probably for this house. (ref. 412) Arundell appears in occupation of the house in the ratebook for that year, but payments for work continued until 1723, including those to the upholsterer, Jones, the stonecutter, Davenport, and the painter, Alexander Reid. (ref. 413)

In 1722 Arundell was paying for the canvas stretched on the walls of the staircase. (ref. 414) This would have been to receive the decorative paintings by Giovanni Niccolo Servandoni and T. Andreae which Vertue and Horace Walpole record as being executed here. (ref. 415)

In May 1726, after his lease was signed, Arundell insured his house for £1200. (ref. 416)

In 1749, after the death of General Wade, the Arundells moved to his former house a few doors up the street at No. 29. No. 34 was then taken, in 1751, by Thomas Townshend, the scholarly Member for Cambridge University and Teller of the Exchequer, (ref. 417) who was nephew of Henry Pelham and who witnessed a codicil to Lady Frances Arundell's will. (ref. 347) He lived here until his death in 1780.

From 1808 to 1819 the house was occupied by Colonel William Elliott or Eliot, for whom J. W. Hiort is said to have executed a design, presumably a more or less substantial alteration. (ref. 418) Gilbert Elliot, second Earl of Minto, (ref. 241) lived here from 1819 to 1821 and the seventh Lord Reay from 1821 to 1823. In the latter year Lord Reay sold the house for £5700 to Lord George Cavendish, (ref. 419) evidently for occupation by his son, Colonel (later General) the Hon. H. F. C. Cavendish. (ref. 420) In this year, 1823, the architect William Atkinson, who had some ten years previously provided the family with designs for the redevelopment of the Burlington House site, is said to have been responsible for a house here for Colonel Cavendish, (ref. 418) although the existing house was not completely rebuilt. In 1832 the house was empty and the rateable value very considerably increased, (ref. 24) perhaps on account of the buildings mentioned as having been lately erected in the garden in a mortgage of 1841. (ref. 421) It was probably at this time that the whole Burlington Gardens frontage running back to Cork Street was first built over, as is indicated on Mayhew's parish map of 1831–6 which shows a recessed colonnaded treatment of the western part of the Burlington Gardens front. (ref. 112)

General Cavendish continued to occupy the house, known as Cavendish House, until his death in 1873. In 1874 it and the adjacent house, No. 33, stood empty, and in May the two houses were sold by auction for £38,000. (ref. 422) They were thenceforward occupied as the Bristol Hotel and Restaurant. In 1875–6 a storey was added and alterations carried out by the architects C. E. Barlow and J. E. Boys: the builder's tender was for £15,561. (ref. 423) Between 1875 and 1876 the rateable value was increased from £751 (for the two separate houses) to £1667. This was increased to £2917 in 1881, (ref. 24) perhaps because of alterations retrospectively noticed in The Builder in 1884. (ref. 424)

Alterations were made in 1927–8 by H. Kempton Dyson, to accommodate shops on the ground floor and a picture gallery in a new fifth storey. (ref. 425)

Architectural Description

The four houses designed by Colin Campbell have an importance beyond their own considerable merit, for the façade behind which they were grouped, with no articulation of the party walls, may well have provided the prototype for much of the uniform street architecture of the eighteenth century (Plate 81a, fig. 92). This importance was recognized by Ralph, who wrote in 1734 that 'The first four houses, opposite to the Duke of Queensborough's stable-gate, are, beyond comparison, in the finest taste of any common buildings we can see any where: without the least affectation of ornament, or seeming design of any remarkable elegance, they have all the elegance that can be given to such a design, and need no ornament to make them remarkable. In a word, I would recommend this row as a sample of the most perfect kind for our modern architects to follow; and if none of our squares had a worse set of edifices in them than these, we should never regret the want of a better'. (ref. 426)

The idea for this uniform elevation probably derives from Campbell's Rolls House of 1718, (ref. 427) omitting the pediments from the first-floor windows and providing less assertive doorcases for the four entrances. Malton's view of Uxbridge House (Plate 75b) includes part of Campbell's front and shows it before alteration, three storeys high with dormers in the roof, the entire front being thirteen windows wide, four belonging to No. 31, the largest house. The plans were arranged in two mirrored pairs, so that the doorway of No. 34 was on the left of its two ground-floor windows, and that of No. 33 was on the right. This arrangement was repeated in the other pair except that in No. 31 where the ground storey survives there are two windows on the left of the doorway and one on the right. Campbell's design was executed in a good stock brick with a liberal use of stone dressings. No. 31 is the only house where the ground-storey front survives, but even this has been altered (Plate 81a, fig. 94). The simple pedestal, comprising a stone plinth and sill-band with a brick die, looks original, but the window apertures appear to have been enlarged, furnished with new sashes, and framed with new architraves finished, perhaps, with the original small cornices. The doorway has a modern glazed door to a design based on plate XXV of Salmon's Palladio Londinensis, but the stone doorcase is original. The opening is framed with a moulded architrave, flanked by panelled jambs from which bold consoles, carved with acanthus leaves and drapery swags, project to support the entablature. This has its architrave and plain frieze broken and recessed above the doorway architrave, and its cornice carried across to serve as a hood. A plain bandcourse underlines the first-floor windows. Each has a double-square aperture dressed with a moulded architrave, eared at the head and finished with a narrow pulvinofrieze and a cornice. The second-storey windows have generally been altered, but Malton shows that each aperture was originally square and completely framed with a moulded architrave, eared at each corner. A bold block cornice and a pedestalparapet originally finished the front, but an attic with over-large windows has been added, replacing the original roof and its triangular-pedimented dormers.

The four houses were planned alike, each with a back room and a front room divided by a transverse wall from the front staircase hall, which was two storeys high, the service stair, and a small back room. No. 34 alone had a projecting wing. The width of the principal rooms was much the same in all the houses, but the width of the compartment containing the staircases varied with the frontage.

Figure 93: No. 31 Old Burlington Street, plans

The four house plots extended westwards to Cork Street, all but No. 34 having long gardens ending with a wall against which, in one corner, a privy was built. No. 31 is shown in the Chatsworth plan of 1773 (fig. 92) as having a basement extension of three rooms, one apparently a kitchen, built directly against the back of the house. No. 32 is shown without vaults, but No. 33 had three vaulted cellars under the garden. No. 34 had the most elaborate arrangement of all, with the basement extending below the greater part of the garden and including a large, groin-vaulted kitchen. At the Cork Street end of the site was a garden house, fronted by a portico and containing a central room with a coved ceiling. On either side of this large room were two small rooms, one a privy and the other a cold bath.

No. 31 is the finest and best preserved of these houses, containing some very good original decorations along with period reproductions and imported features, especially in the basement and second-floor rooms (figs. 93–6). The front door opens, through a modern glazed lobby, to the stair hall, a square compartment two storeys high (Plate 88a). The wooden staircase is of generous width and easy ascent, rising in three flights against the west, north and east walls, to a gallery landing on the south. The first step is continued with a bold circular sweep, returning against the panelled spandrel below the first flight, and the second step has a curved end to take the voluted curtail of the balustrade. This has a broad handrail of oak, resting on turned balusters and ramping up over the newel-columns (fig. 96). There are three balusters to each tread, all being turned in the form of slender Doric columns on urn-shaped bases, the middle baluster-column having a vertically fluted shaft, with a fluted twist on the left and a barley-sugar twist on the right. Each newel is turned as a fluted column with a Composite capital, to which the moulded face of the handrail provides an entablature. The cut strings are treated as architraves, overlaid by richly carved scroll-brackets placed below the returned nosings of the treads. A dado of raisedand-fielded panels, with Composite pilasters and a moulded rail, responds to the balustrade. The plain surfaces of the stair compartment must have been intended for decorative painting and until recently the walls, cove and ceiling were painted with trompe l'oeil architectural ornaments in the style of William Kent, in olive-brown and gold. This decoration, however, was modern, having been executed by Lenygon and Company (later Lenygon and Morant), who occupied the house from 1909 to 1953. Now the only ornaments are the dentilled cornice below the cove, and the moulded frame to the flat ceiling.

The front and back rooms on the ground floor are uniformly lined with deal panelling of exceptionally fine quality, probably installed by Stephen Fox when he took the house in 1730 (Plates 88b, 89). In each room there is a pedestaldado with long panels in the die, the skirting mouldings and the cornice-rail being highly enriched with carving, the rail featuring a key-fret. Above the dado are large panels, flanked on the wider faces by narrow panels. The large panels have slightly projecting ovolo-moulded frames, carved with a leaf-and-flower ornament, and on the inside is a beaded moulding. The mouldings of the narrow panels are carved with a formal leaf ornament, also used for the dado panel mouldings. A full entablature finishes the panelling, having a moulded architrave with enriched mouldings, a plain narrow frieze, and a dentilled cornice with three enriched mouldings, including a bold eggand-dart ovolo. Each room has three doorways, one at either end of the side wall, and one in the middle of the end wall. The latter door, being the link between the rooms, has the most elaborate doorcase. It consists of a moulded architrave with enriched mouldings, eared at the head and broken by a triple keyblock, the middle one adorned with a finely carved head, male in the front room and female in the back. The keyblocks also break into the pulvino-frieze, which is enriched with an ornamental scroll of foliage and flowers, and extends between richly carved scrollconsoles, rising from panelled pilaster-strips and supporting a triangular pediment. The doorcases in the side walls have enriched architraves, eared at the head, carved pulvino-friezes similar to those just described, and enriched cornices. Each doorway is furnished with a six-panelled door, the panel mouldings being enriched with carving.

Figure 94: No. 31 Old Burlington Street, section and elevation

Figure 95: No. 31 Old Burlington Street, section

The most important feature in each room is the continued chimneypiece, set against the projecting chimney-breast. In the front room a figured marble is used for the fireplace surround, a wide moulded architrave, its outer mouldings eared and shouldered. The rest of the work is in wood, the chimneypiece proper being finished with a frieze and cornice-shelf. The frieze is ornamented with three male heads carved in high relief, a youth in the middle and a bearded man on either side, the latter projecting from console-brackets placed above the ears of the fireplace architrave. Each head is partly swathed with drapery, that around the youth's head continuing in wide festoons across the frieze to end in pendants against the console-brackets. These last support forward breaks in the cornice-shelf, which has dentils and carved enrichments. Above the chimneypiece is an oblong picture frame, resting on a plinth carved with a rich wave-scroll. The frame is formed of a flat architrave, carved with an elaborate fret and bordered by enriched mouldings, the outer egg-and-dart ovolo curving in a bold scroll at the foot of each side member. The head of the architrave is eared and shouldered, and on the ears rest console-brackets, carved with acanthus leaves below scallop-shells. These consoles, which are repeated in profile on the outer side of the chimneypiece, support a forward break in the main entablature of the room. Above the head of the picture frame is a frieze decoration of oak-garland festoons flanking a scallop-shell, and down each side of the frame hangs a husk pendant.

Figure 96: No. 31 Old Burlington Street, staircase balustrade

The chimneypiece in the back room is similar to that in the front, except that female heads are used for the masks on the frieze. The overmantel, however, is different. The picture is set within an oblong frame formed of an architrave similar to that used in the front room, but the outer moulding is unbroken. This frame has a plain marginal surround, flanked by downward tapering pilasters, like term pedestals, with panelled shafts containing pendants of flowers and foliage hanging from a satyr-mask. Above each pilaster is a console-bracket, carved with a trio of acanthus buds, supporting a forward break in the main entablature, and between the brackets is a frieze carving of eagles with tails formed of foliage scrolls.

The front-room ceiling is decorated with raised mouldings enclosing panels, the large central oblong with incurved corners being framed by a band of wave-scroll bordered on the inside with an egg-and-dart ovolo, and on the outside with a formal leaf-patterned moulding. In each corner of the ceiling is a circular panel framed with an egg-and-dart ovolo, which is also used to enclose the segment-ended oblong border panels. The decorative paintings within these panels, shown in some early photographs, were probably added by Lenygon and Morant who had removed them by 1949. The back room ceiling is also divided by raised enriched mouldings into a geometrical arrangement of panels, with a large octagon predominating.

The splendid rooms on the ground floor make a striking contrast to those on the first floor, where the panelling is of an ordinary quality. This raised-and-fielded panelling, finished with a plain skirting, moulded dado-rail, and a box-cornice, all without enrichment, was probably standard throughout the ground-and first-floor rooms when the house was first built. The opening between the front and back rooms, an arch framed by a moulded archivolt rising from Doric pilasters with panelled shafts, was probably introduced by Lenygon and Morant, who must also have added the enriched pulvino friezes and cornices to the door architraves in the back room. The two large rooms have plain ceilings, but in the north back room is a ceiling painted on canvas with a singerie composition in the manner of Andien de Clermont. Opinions differ as to the date and authenticity of this work, and it may be significant that it is not among the examples of the style illustrated or described by Francis Lenygon in his Decoration in England from 1660 to 1770. There is in each of the rooms a richly detailed chimneypiece of late eighteenth-century character, presumably introduced by Lenygon and Morant. The second-floor rooms are period interiors contrived by them to form a suitable setting for displaying furniture and furnishings.

No. 32 has been considerably altered; a shopfront fills the ground storey, and the front staircase with a cast-iron balustrade appears to be of late nineteenth-century date. The service stair is original, but a lift has been installed within the well. The large ground-floor rooms have been completely remodelled, but the small room behind the service stair has its original panelling, finished with an enriched dado-rail and cornice, the ceiling having a cove finished with a moulded border. Similarly, the main rooms on the first floor have been greatly altered, whilst the small back room is little changed and resembles that below. On the second floor some partitions have been removed, though much of the original panelling survives.

The other two houses, now part of No. 3–5 Burlington Gardens, have been greatly altered externally and completely reconstructed inside. It was for the southernmost house that Kent designed the interior elevation given on plate 67 of his Inigo Jones (Plate 91a). With its two doors and an approximate length of 24 feet, it would have fitted one of the front rooms. The elevation to Burlington Gardens has been altered in the ground storey, and a top-heavy attic of two stages has been added. Enough remains, however, to show that in 1823 William Atkinson continued the main lines, and generally copied the details of Campbell's front, although large three-light windows were introduced into the eastern half of the composition.

Footnotes

References