The Rutland House Estate
The site of Rutland Gate was formerly two adjoining
three-acre fields known as Wellfields. The lower or southern field lay directly behind the upper field, but slightly
offset, and this 'displacement' is preserved in the shape of
the development. In the seventeenth century Wellfields
belonged to the extensive estate of William. Muschamp of
Kensington. By 1752, when John Manners, 3rd Duke of
Rutland, built Rutland House there, they were owned by
John Milner, whose uncle had bought them in 1699, and
they formed an independent freehold estate. The duke's
lease covered the whole property, the upper field being the
site of the house and gardens, while the lower was used as a
paddock. (ref. 1)
A Chancery suit following Milner's death led to a public
auction in 1771, when the freehold was bought by Jacob
Whitbread, who ten years later sold it to Edward Manners
of Goadby Marwood in Leicestershire, believed to have
been the 3rd Duke of Rutland's illegitimate son. (ref. 2) Manners
died in 1811, leaving the property for life to Ann Stafford,
and on her death to the ten children he had fathered by her.
A complex legal dispute after she died was not resolved
until 1836–7, when the entire freehold effectively passed to
Elizabeth Manners, the widow of the eldest son, Fursan.
By drastically reducing the number of parties required to
be involved in any legal transaction concerning the estate,
this greatly facilitated its development on building leases. (ref. 3)
The Manners family retained the freehold of the entire
estate until 1853, when the southern half was sold to the
developer John Elger. The northern half was in the possession of Cubitt Estates before the First World War.
Rutland House (demolished)
Rutland House was built in 1752–3 by John Manners, 3rd
Duke of Rutland, as a residence for himself, his companion
Mrs Elizabeth Drake, and their son Edward Manners, then
aged about seven. (fn. a) The middling-sized mansion was
among the earliest of the string of detached houses erected
in the mid-eighteenth century along the south side of the
Kensington road, between the older Powis House to the
east and Kensington House to the west. It was also one of
the first to disappear, being pulled down in the 1830s.
Doubtless the irregular nature of Mrs Drake's relationship with the duke, a widower in his mid-50s, was a factor
in the choice of an out-of-town location. Nevertheless,
there was nothing particularly clandestine about the
arrangement. The duke's eldest son and heir, the famous
Marquess of Granby, Commander-in-Chief of land forces
in Great Britain, was a regular visitor. One of his daughters
was born in the house in 1772, and the marquess himself,
who predeceased his father, died there in 1773.
The site was taken by the duke on an 80-year lease from
John Milner in March 1752. Building work began immediately and the house was substantially complete by the summer of 1753. It cost just under £4,432, of which £1,771 was
paid to the bricklayer, Richard Stanton, and £1,317 to the
carpenter, John Wright. (fn. b) Extras included payments to a
watchman for 440 nights at is a night (and £15s for meat for
his cat), and £78s 3d for a 'raising dinner' given to the men. (ref. 4)
Nowhere in the building accounts is there a mention of
the architect, who is thought to have been John Vardy. The
evidence for his involvement is a sheet of drawings,
unsigned and undated but endorsed 'John Vardy 1763'
(Plate 72b). (ref. 5) The date is puzzling, and raises the question
whether the endorsement is contemporary. Vardy's
absence from the accounts might be explained if he did no
more than provide a draught of the house. A 'Mr Morris',
perhaps the surveyor and architectural writer Robert Morris, was responsible for measuring the builders' work.
Rutland House was built of red brick, with some Portland-stone dressings. It was a squarish building, five bays
wide with a pedimented centre, flanked by lower service
wings and linking arcades – the classic Palladian disposition. At the time of its demolition the house had three full
storeys plus an attic (Plate 72a), but both the 'Vardy' drawing and Rhodes's map of 1766 (Plate 2a) show a two-storey
building. The elevations were plain, embellished only with
simple bandcourses and a central stone frontispiece
embracing the pedimented and columned doorcase and the
window surround on the floor above. The mason was paid
extra for altering the frontispiece 'from what was first
intended'.
The interior was conventionally planned (Plate 72b). On
the ground floor was a large entrance hall, dining-room,
drawing-room, and another room called the library in a
later survey. The staircase, a wooden one, was relegated to
a compartment behind the hall. On the first or principal
floor were four bedrooms and several closets. According to
the Vardy plan only the western of the two single-storey
'arcade' rooms communicated directly with the house
itself. The stables were in the east service wing, the
kitchens in the west wing.
The building accounts do not convey the impression of
an elaborately decorated interior. In the principal rooms
the walls appear to have been mostly hung with fabric,
above wainscotted dados, and there were enriched plaster
cornices. Stone and marble chimneypieces, carved by
James Whittle & Son, were installed in the dining – and
drawing-rooms and in the first-floor rooms, the most
expensive decorated with carved tablets – 'Diana's head &
her Trophies' (dining-room), and 'Apollo's Head in Glory'
(drawing-room).
After the death of the duke in 1779, the property and most
of its contents passed to Elizabeth Drake, (ref. 6) who seems to have
gone on living there until she died, about 1800. For much of
that time the rates were paid by her son, Edward Manners,
by then the freehold owner of the estate. He succeeded his
mother as the occupant, and on his own death in 1811, the
house passed to his common-law wife Ann Stafford, who
shared it with her eldest son, Fursan Manners. (ref. 7)
Following Ann Stafford's death in 1827, Rutland House
stood empty for several years while the estate languished in
the limbo of litigation. Then in 1833 it was put on the market, and George Robins, the auctioneer, issued particulars
balancing some eye-catching views of the house (Plate 72a)
against a frank assessment of the problems and potential of
the property: (ref. 8)
A few years since … it had the misfortune to be visited with a
fearful attack from the Court of Chancery, which on the outset
paralyzed almost every limb … It is now happily convalescent,
but it would be uncandid to deny that there are 'outward and visible signs' that a termination of this protracted suit was most
devoutly to be wished.
In its present condition the 'house would be inadequate to
the high pretensions of a Nobleman without encountering
a large outlay'. On the other hand, a 'Minister of State
would find it difficult to resist this expenditure, or adopting the alternative to crect a more splendid habitation,
when it is remembered that all the agrémens of a Town and
Country abode are contained at a distance of ten minutes
drive from the Great Offices of State'.
Alternatively, the site offered an opportunity for development on an 'extended Scale', being 'suitable for an
Immense Square of First-Rate Houses or a group of
detached Villas'.
For all the auctioneer's blandishments, Rutland House
failed to attract a buyer. Empty and unwanted, the neglected mansion survived until January 1836 when it was pulled
down for redevelopment, Robins being called in again to
sell the materials. (ref. 9)