LXXVIII—MANOR HOUSE OF TOTTENHALL (TOTTENHAM COURT)
There is no very extensive information to be obtained concerning the
character of the building of the Manor House, but there is no doubt about
its site which was at the north-east corner of the present junction of Euston
Road with Hampstead Road and Tottenham Court Road. The story, so often
repeated, that it was on the west of Hampstead Road, on the site of the
Adam and Eve public-house, has no foundation whatever.
The position is clearly marked on a plan made by William Necton
on 6th April, 1591 (Plate 70). The Manor was then in the hands of the
Crown and this was one of the surveys of Crown property which are found in
the Marquess of Salisbury's Collection at Hatfield House, having been made
when Cecil was Secretary of State. The surveyor added a memorandum with
some remarks on the building, which was then in the occupation of Daniel
Clarke, Master Cook to Queen Elizabeth and afterwards to James I. He calls
it "a very slender building of timber and brick" which "hath beene of a
larger building than now it is. For some little parte hath beene pulled downe
of late to amend some part of the houses now standing (ref. 115) ." These alterations
had been carried out by Clarke's predecessor, Alexander Glover. Further
repairs are stated to be necessary, particularly to two rooms 24 by 15 feet
and 34 by 15 feet respectively, "very greatlie decaied wch will cost to be
repaired lxli at the least."
When William Necton referred to the Manor House as a "slender
building" he was probably speaking in a comparative sense. Nearly sixty
years later we have the description of the house contained in the Survey of
1649, printed in Appendix IX of St. Pancras, Part II. From this we learn
that the house stood in 1½ acres within a moat. The description starts with
the gatehouse, which had a chamber and two closets over the gate. One then
entered a little courtyard and approached the hall which may have been
raised about the ground for mention is made of a "wood room under the
stairs there." At one end of the hall was a wainscotted parlour and at the
other the usual provision of kitchen, larder and cellar. There follow a little
wainscotted parlour, a fair staircase and then one great chamber with an
inner room, seven other rooms and a pair of back stairs. The outbuildings,
orchard and garden complete the catalogue and can be compared with those
on William Necton's drawing. Although neither description indicates a very
large house they show a tolerable amount of accommodation.
In the Heal Collection at the St. Pancras Public Library is a watercolour drawing, made by W. Burden in 1801, which is described as the copy
of a painting of the Manor House in 1743 (Plate 69). On the right is an
Elizabethan building of three storeys with two prominent wings, between
which is the entrance to the house. Over the central part is a curved gable;
the wings have plain gables and bold panelled buttresses finishing in obelisks
at the external angles. The windows appear to be of stone with mullions and
transomes. On the left, recessed some distance, is an older two-storey building
projecting at right angles from the Elizabethan range. From its gables,
arched doorway and windows, and from the presence of a large pointed stone
arch adjoining it, this building can be identified as the subject of an engraving
in Londina Illustrata (see Plate 69) entitled "King John's Palace," the name
given to a structure which is known to have stood on the Manor House site
and which was pulled down early in the 19th-century. It seems clear from
this that the Elizabethan range had disappeared before the drawing was made.
We have, therefore, two views of separate parts of the Manor House
on which we can place some reliance. There is no clue to the aspect of either
of these views and Necton's little conventional representation of the house
does not help in this respect. The block of building shown by Rocque in his
map of 1745, which includes the King's Head Public House, (fn. *) is too near the
road to be the Manor House.
The general lay-out is indicated pretty clearly by Necton in 1591.
The site of house, court, orchard, garden and Pond Close occupied about
7 acres. The house stands in the northern part of a rectangular enclosure,
no doubt the moated area of 1½ acres of the 1649 survey, leaving a court to
the south approached by a gatehouse on its southern boundary. The garden
lay to the east and the orchard to the north and west, so that the house was
centrally placed and well protected. South of the gatehouse an outer court
is shown stretching from the road on the west to the extreme boundary on
the east. South of this again is the Pond Close which can be recognized in
the enclosure with its pond shown on Rocque's Map. The site of the later
Euston Road is roughly that of the outer or entrance court. It is perhaps
worth noting that, if Necton's sketch is even approximately correct, the
Manor House showed the normal Elizabethan practice of making the
entrance to the south and the principal rooms facing north.
The large pond to the north of the Manor House site, shown in
Rocque's Map, does not appear on Necton's plan and it was outside the
grounds of the house. It was later converted into a reservoir of the New
River Company and is so shown on Davies' Map of St. Marylebone, etc.
(1834). Tolmer Square now covers the site.