CHAPTER V
St. James's Square: Individual Houses
Nos. 1 and 2 St. James's Square
Architects, Messrs. Mewès and Davis, 1954–6<demolished 1996>
The site of these two houses was originally, like
that of Nos. 17 and 18 on the opposite side of the
square, occupied by a single mansion on a corner
site, with a long frontage to the square. Its site
was the first to be disposed of by the Earl of St.
Albans and his trustees, on 26/27 July 1665, when
a grant of the leasehold interest was made to Henry
Bennet, Lord Arlington, and of the freehold to
Sir Thomas Clifford of Ugbrooke, Devon, and
William Godolphin of the Inner Temple, as
trustees for Arlington. The site had a front of
97 feet to the square and a depth of 200 feet along
the north side of Charles (now Charles II) Street.
Unlike later grants in the square, the deed described the site in reference to St. Albans's own
grant, as reputedly a half of the northern plot on
the east side of the intended square. Also unlike
later grants, no ground-rent was reserved to St.
Albans, Arlington covenanting merely to pay
direct to the Crown a proportionate part of the
ground-rent payable by St. Albans. (ref. 1) This
amounted to £5 16s. 8d. per annum at 1s. 2d. per
foot for a frontage of a nominal 100 feet. (ref. 2)
Arlington undertook to build within two years
on the entire frontage 'one good and sufficient
Pyatza house' to the scantlings, materials and
height of storeys 'as are already agreed upon and
appointed by Sir John Dynham [Denham] his
Majesties Surveyor Generall of the Workes there
and to be uniforme and according to the designe
thereof made and agreed uppon as aforesaid'. (ref. 1) For
an unknown reason the grant was repeated to
Clifford and Godolphin, presumably as trustees,
on 20 March 1665/6. (ref. 3)
on 20 March 1665/6. (ref. 3)
The early history of the ownership of the site is
nevertheless uncertain. In St. Albans's rent-roll
of 1676 Lord Arlington appeared as owner by
right of the grant of July 1665. (ref. 2) But it was
Arlington's elder brother, Sir John Bennet, later
Lord Ossulston, who had negotiated with a
builder in March 1669/70 for the erection of a
house and was its occupant until it passed, on his
death, to his son, the second Lord Ossulston, later
first Earl of Tankerville. No conveyance from
Arlington to his brother is known to survive but
presumably a family compact was in operation. In
July 1663 Sir John had been granted a building
lease by St. Albans of a site in St. James's market
place. (ref. 1)
Despite the terms of the grant of 1665 it was
not immediately followed by building, which
finally took place on this site approximately at the
same time as that in the rest of the square, in the
1670's. In March 1669/70 Sir John Bennet
came to an agreement with John Downes of the
parish of St. Martin in the Fields, bricklayer, for
the building of a 'great messuage' in the 'piatzo'
and also of adjacent houses on the north side of
Charles Street. The agreement was subsequently
the subject of Chancery proceedings which give
the only evidence of its provisions. (ref. 4) Sir John
claimed that, having 'little skill in building', he
was persuaded by Downes, who pretended to 'a
great skill in Architecture', to entrust him not
only with erecting the buildings 'according to the
plot and designe' agreed between them but also
with 'provideing all brick, lyme, tyles and other
materialls belonging to a bricklayers worke', for
which he was allowed to dig sand on the property.
Thus, according to Sir John, he 'did wholly
comitt the care and management of the said building unto the said John Downes'. Any disputes
over the charges for the work were to be referred
to arbitrators, and, if they could not agree, to
the Surveyor General, Wren. (fn. a) Sir John agreed to
pay Downes £200 when the articles were sealed
between them, and then during the course of the
work to pay for all bricklayer's work as each storey
was completed. A year was allowed for the work,
Downes covenanting, according to Sir John, to
complete the brickwork before 24 March 1670/1
'if the weather did not hinder'.
The house was in existence by January 1673/4,
when it was mentioned as the boundary of the site
of No. 3. (ref. 5)
The quality of construction did not prove to be
satisfactory to Sir John, who in May 1675 complained in what he called 'a friendly manner' to
Downes of his 'slight or inartificiall building of the
said houses', and had the dispute referred to
arbitrators. In May 1676 Sir John petitioned the
Court of Chancery. He complained that the
brickwork had been made only four inches thick,
'by reason whereof the Chymnies of the said house
when your orator came to use them and make fires
therein would not carry smoake but the smoake
did goe through the chimney backs and fill the
roomes behinde the said chimnies with smoake so
that it rendred the said chimnys and Roomes useless to your Orator and by reason of the thinness of
the said chimnies the fire therein did burne off the
pins and peggs that fastned the wainscott to the
said chimnies and very much indangered the burning downe the said great house'. Bad workmanship and material had caused walls and chimneys
to crack and fall, necessitating the expenditure
of large sums on repairs and rebuilding.
Sir John seems to have claimed to have paid
Downes at least £1850. In his reply Downes
acknowledged receiving only £1814, and claimed
that some £238 more was owed to him. Sir John
further claimed that during a meeting of the
arbitrators in 1675, 'whilest your orator was
busied in makeing out and proveing' his complaint,
Downes 'clandestinely and surreptitiously' took
from him a receipt for £1800: Downes replied
that he had simply retrieved a statement of his
expenses. He asserted that the work was done
'well and substantially' and that as the quantity of
work for which he was to be paid was to be 'reduced by measure to a brick and halfe thick' the
method of calculating the extent of the brickwork
made it advantageous for him to build thick walls.
Any subsequent expenditure by Sir John on the
house had been 'to alter or beautifie the same
according to the plaintiff's fancy' and not to
remedy defects. (ref. 4) Nevertheless, the history of the
house in the square and of those in Charles Street
suggests that the original construction may have
been unsound.
The occupation of the house was thus delayed,
and it was not until 1677 that it appears in the
ratebooks, in the occupation of Sir John, who had
previously lived on the south side of Pall Mall. (ref. 6)
In January of that year, perhaps before it was
fitted for permanent occupation, it was hired by
Lord Purbeck, who himself had a house on the
other side of the square, for a masked ball that set
tongues wagging. (ref. 7)
Lord Ossulston seems not to have occupied the
house regularly, sometimes being rated for that on
the Army and Navy Club site, (ref. 6) and after his death
it was used intermittently as an embassy for a
quarter of a century. In February 1697/8 the
second Lord Ossulston, who in 1714 was created
Earl of Tankerville, leased the house to the Crown
for two years, at £400 per annum, to be used to
accommodate foreign ambassadors. (ref. 8) In April
1698 the Swedish ambassador was perhaps
lodging here. (ref. 9) In February 1701/2 Lord Ossulston leased the house, at £360 per annum, to
Nicholas Santiny, a merchant of London, who
was evidently acting on behalf of the Venetian
ambassador. (ref. 10) In March 1704/5 he granted
another lease to Santiny but for a month only, (ref. 10)
and by the summer of 1705 the division of the
house into two parts was being effected by his
workmen, Jeremy Delavall, carpenter, Thomas
Anyon, bricklayer, and Francis Browne, painter. (ref. 11)
In March 1705/6 Ossulston let the smaller,
southern, part of the divided building, occupying
the corner with an entrance in Charles Street, to
Thomas Brerewood, sometimes described as a
merchant, of the parish of St. Clement Danes,
who was an agent for clothing the Duke of
Schomberg's and the Duke of Northumberland's
regiments and who seems to have been involved in
great financial difficulties. (ref. 12) The lease was for
twenty-one years at £50 per annum, with a condition that Brerewood should spend £200 on the
repair of the house. (ref. 13) Brerewood later claimed to
have spent this and £500 more on new wainscoting, floors, staircase and chimneys, on a verbal
understanding that Ossulston would reimburse
him for the uncovenanted expenditure. (ref. 14) At
about this time Ossulston was himself repairing
the more northerly house which he occupied. (ref. 15)
If Brerewood is to be believed, all the Ossulston
property in the square and Charles Street needed
repair, and in fact in April 1709 Ossulston granted
a building lease of two houses in Charles Street,
adjoining the house let to Brerewood, to his carpenter, Delavall, and an associate. (ref. 16) Brerewood
subsequently complained that Delavall's activities
caused the collapse of a chimney-stack, damaging
Brerewood's house. (ref. 14) His assessment of the
damage seems to have been much higher than that
made in April 1711 by John James. (ref. 17) There was
a collapse of No. 3, or part of it, at about the
same time, in which Delavall was involved (see
page 84) but it is not certain what was the
causal relationship between these structural
mishaps. The collapse at No. 3 may have
been connected with further work on the house in
Ossulston's own occupation which, at this time,
was also, according to Brerewood, 'new building
or repaireing'. (ref. 14) The end of 1710 and summer of
1711 saw disputes between Ossulston and Brerewood over the cost of repairing the damage to
Brerewood's house, and Brerewood petitioned the
Court of Chancery. (ref. 18) The matter was composed
but in October 1712 Brerewood was again
petitioning Chancery that Ossulston was trying to
eject him because he had an opportunity to let
both the divided houses 'to some foreign Ambassador'. According to Brerewood, Ossulston threatened to be 'a troublesome neighbour' to him if he
did not comply. (ref. 14) The result of the dispute is not
known but Brerewood remained in occupation of
the corner house until nearly the end of his twentyone-year term. (ref. 6)
In September 1713 Ossulston was being offered
£300 per annum by the Savoyard ambassador for
his house, presumably the one in the square. (ref. 19) In
September 1714 he let the more northerly house
to Baron Bothmar, the minister of the new
Hanoverian monarch by whom, in the following
month, Ossulston was advanced in the peerage as
Earl of Tankerville. The rent charged was only
£275 per annum, with Bothmar undertaking to
reimburse his landlord for any rates and taxes over
£25 per annum, and to spend £500 repairing the
coach-house and stables at the back. The term
was seven years, renewable for a further seven.
A schedule appended to the lease gives some
description of the house at this time. On the
ground floor the 'Little Dining Room' and the
'Great Parlour' were both panelled with wainscot
to the ceiling, which in the former room was
painted. The chimneypieces were of marble, in
black, white and blue-and-white. In the entrance
hall, wainscoted with raised panels and bolectionmouldings, was a Portland stone chimneypiece,
and a 'large Arch', carved, with fluted Corinthian
pilasters. This probably gave on to the 'Great
Staircase', with its carved brackets and 'iron folded
and wainscot railes', lit by two stone-moulded
sash windows and two lesser sash windows, and
rising under 'a frett work Ceiling'. On the first
floor, containing the 'Great Dining Room' lit by
three windows, all the rooms were panelled to
window or ceiling height, and had black or white
marble chimneypieces. On these two floors all
the windows had sashes, but on the second floor
the windows, including those fronting the square,
were casements. The rooms on this floor, all
panelled window-high, had wooden chimneypieces. Above, the garrets contained a laundry. (ref. 10)
At about this time Ossulston was having a legal
dispute with the executors of his bricklayer,
Anyon, (ref. 19) and in 1718–20 he seems to have been
similarly involved with Delavall and James. (ref. 20) He
carried out no further building work in the square,
although his subscription to Leoni's edition of
Palladio (ref. 21) possibly indicates a more than utilitarian
interest in architecture.
In May 1722 the first Earl died. Bothmar
probably vacated the northerly house at about the
same time. (ref. 22) Brerewood continued to occupy the
southerly house (ref. 23) but the second Earl immediately
began alterations to Bothmar's old house. In
January 1723 work worth upwards of £334 seems
to have been carried out, mainly in rebuilding the
back of the house, by John Jenner, a bricklayer
who was also employed at the Bennets' country
house at Dawley. (ref. 24)
(fn. b) The ending of Brerewood's
tenancy in 1726 allowed the work to be extended,
under Jenner's supervision, to the southern house.
In the summer of that year, into the following
winter, the carpenter worked on a new roof, (fn. c) and
shored up the house for the rebuilding of 'ye two
fronts', presumably to the square and to Charles
Street. In January 1726/7 Jenner was 'pulling
down the old Brick House' to 'Inlarge the great
room', and the Earl was approving Jenner's 'contrivance of a Girder instedd of the Columns in the
new designed great Room': the divided houses
were thus reunited. (ref. 24) In April Jenner was being
urged by Tankerville's steward 'to spurr the
People on to Make an End of that Hows as fast
as you can—It hangs shamefully long.'
The work was again attended with disputes.
The bill for bricklayer's work carried out by a
James Jenner amounted to some £503 at £7 per
rod. In April 1729 Co[lin] Campbell gave his
opinion that £6 per rod was a sufficient price, and
the Earl further abated Jenner's bill in respect of
the large proportion of old brick that had been reused. A lawsuit resulted and in February 1729/1730 arbitrators awarded John Jenner's executors
£184 against the Earl. (ref. 24)
The exterior of the house after this rebuilding
appears in Bowles's view published in c. 1752
(Plate 130, fig. 5). This shows a nine-window-wide front to the square, with a central entrance.
The exterior, with eaves-cornice, bandcourse,
rusticated quoins and garret windows, seems to
have been unremarkable. The first-floor windows
looking on the square were segmental-headed
with keystones and the sills supported by brackets,
but the Charles Street windows were straight-headed.
If the exterior was unassuming the interior was
evidently elaborate. The house was still unoccupied in 1727 (ref. 6) and the decoration of the interior was not completed for some years. On
14 January 1728/9 the Earl, as an adherent of
Prince Frederick, gave a ball in his honour: at
No. 6 Lady Bristol reported to her husband that
the square was 'full of mobb' and that the Earl had
for a fortnight past employed a hundred workmen
'to finish and furnish his house for this great
occasion'. (ref. 26) The most notable work still remained
to be done, the painting of the hall and staircase by
the Venetian, Jacopo Amigoni (or Amiconi), and
his compatriot Brunetti, which was finished in
March 1731. According to a contemporary newspaper this 'exquisite Piece of Workmanship' illustrated 'the Discovery of Achilles; the Preservation
of Telemachus, with the Prophecy of the blind
Tiresias'. (ref. 27) Amigoni made it clear to a prospective client attracted by this work that he had concerned himself only with 'ye Historicall parts' and
had 'had a person to do ye ornaments', presumably
Brunetti. (ref. 28) Vertue relates that Amigoni asked
Lord Tankerville for only his expenses, amounting
to about £90, finding 'the opportunity to show
what he was capable of doing in so convenient a
place' sufficient further remuneration, whereupon
Tankerville, being 'well pleas'd' with the work,
gave him £200. (ref. 29) The painting certainly succeeded in attracting favourable attention, the
visitors including the Queen. (ref. 30) Horace Walpole
thought his work insipid; 'yet novelty was propitious to Amiconi, and for a few years he had great
business'. (ref. 31) By October 1731 he was able to discard this 'modest & obliging' demeanour in
abortive negotiations with Hawksmoor, acting on
behalf of Lord Carlisle, when he 'insisted upon
[£]200 . . . and that if he did anything at a low
price in one place it wou'd hurt him in another'. (ref. 32)
This decorative work, though much admired,
was short-lived and Vertue had to record that the
wall painting, 'esteemed one of the best & greatest
performance of the works of Amiconi', had been
demolished when Lord Tankerville's 'great house'
was pulled down in 1752. (ref. 33) For despite the early
eighteenth-century repairs and rebuildings the
mid-eighteenth century saw a complete reconstruction of the site and the ending of the Bennet
ownership.
Figure 5:
Ossulston House, St. James's Square. Re-drawn from Bowles's view c. 1752
In April 1750 the Earl mortgaged the house to
secure £1050, and in July 1752 he sold it to
Robert Andrews of St. George's, Hanover Square,
esquire. (fn. d) The price was £6000, including the discharge of the mortgage. Andrews was acting on
behalf of three builders, William Timbrell and
John Spencer, carpenters, and John Barlow, bricklayer, all of St. George's, Hanover Square. Immediately following his grant from the Earl,
Andrews conveyed the property to a trustee, subject to a further trust in favour of the three
builders, conditional upon their repayment of the
£6000 to Andrews plus interest at four per cent by
22 January following. They had agreed with
Andrews to pull down the house and build two
houses in its place, spending 'a much larger Sum
than the £6000 in the doing thereof'. (ref. 35) The old
house was demolished by 1753. (ref. 6)
No. 1
On 30 November 1754 a further £3000 lent
by Andrews to the three builders was charged on
the more southerly of the two new houses. The
first occupant was rated from Lady Day 1756.
This was the second Earl of Dartmouth, to whom
the builders (Timbrell now figuring as 'esquire')
had agreed in January 1756 to make a lease of the
house from midsummer 1756 for seven years at
£280 per annum. The builders undertook that
they would 'compleatly wainscott the large Parlour which adjoyns next to Lord Falmouth's
House' (No. 2). (ref. 36) Lord Dartmouth had recently
married and the trustees of the marriage settlement
had been empowered to spend £5000 on the
purchase of a house in Westminster or the Middlesex Bills of Mortality. In June 1757 they contracted with the builders for the purchase of No. 1
for this sum. On 11 May 1758 the sale, to which
Andrews and his trustee were also parties, was
concluded. (ref. 37)
The ownership of the house by the Earls of
Dartmouth lasted for eighty-seven years. For
most of the period it was occupied by them, but
from 1806 to 1830 was occupied on lease by the
third Lord Grantham, who later, after three
years in No. 13, moved to No. 4 on succeeding to
the de Grey Earldom. (ref. 6)
On 30 April 1845 trustees for the fourth Earl
of Dartmouth sold the house to the London and
Westminster Bank for £10,000. (ref. 38) The Westminster Bank still own and occupy the site.
The lease of the house to Lord Grantham, at
£630 per annum, in 1805 (ref. 39) had contained an
inventory, from which it is possible to gain an
idea of the internal planning at that time.
The house, which had a frontage of about
forty-eight feet to the square and fifty-six to
Charles Street, had its entrance in the centre of the
Charles Street front. This opened into a 'front
hall' which presumably occupied the south-east
angle of the building. Immediately to the left, on
entering, was the 'library' occupying the southwest angle, and having two windows (the inventory lists 'two morine window curtains to draw in
festoon') looking on to the square. The remaining
two windows in the front overlooking the square
(there were 'two green worsted damask window
curtains to draw in festoon') were those of the
'dining room' in the north-west angle. Behind it,
in the north-east angle, was probably the 'back
parlour', whilst the central portion of the eastern
half of the plan, between this and the front hall,
seems to have contained the 'backstairs', next to
the back parlour, and the 'front stairs' adjacent to
the front hall.
The first-floor plan must have been similar,
with a 'front drawing room' to the north overlooking the square and a 'south-west dressing
room', also overlooking the square, adjacent to it.
There was a 'back bedchamber', probably on the
south side of the building above the front hall,
leaving the space above the back parlour for a 'back
dressing room'. The front staircase appears to
have finished, in the normal way, at the first floor,
and must have been top-lit. The general arrangement of the two remaining floors must have been
basically similar, though it is difficult, without
further information, to place the 'middle room'
mentioned as having existed on each of them.
Externally the house is shown in photographs
taken between 1934 and 1938 to have been a composition of three storeys below the main cornice,
with an attic storey above (Plate 164a). It was
four windows wide on the St. James's Square
front, and had six windows, grouped in pairs, to all
except the lowest storey of the Charles Street
front, where there was a central doorway. On
both fronts the bottom storey appears to have
been stuccoed at a date subsequent to that of
Timbrell's original building, and certain other
alterations were probably made at the same time.
Before these alterations were made No. 1 appears
to have been similar in character to No. 2 (also
built by Timbrell) as shown in the same set of
photographs. If this was the case, No. 1 was
originally faced with brick on both fronts, and had,
at the level of the first floor, a stone bandcourse
above which was a vestigial brick pedestal capped
by a continuous narrow stone band at the level of
the first-floor window sills. Above the secondfloor windows the stone cornice was of the Ionic
order, with dentils. A plain stone coping crowned
the attic storey. All the windows, except those of
the attic storey, which were plain, had stepped and
moulded architraves. Those to the ground- and
first-floor windows were eared, presumably on
both fronts. The form of the principal doorway,
in the centre of the Charles Street front, is unknown.
Later (possibly early in the period of the Westminster Bank's occupancy) the details of both
fronts were altered, to their detriment. The bottom storey was faced with stucco, in imitation of a
stone base with horizontal joints channelled. To
the main entrance on Charles Street was added a
projecting rusticated porch of the Tuscan order,
also finished in stucco, with an arched entrance
framed within a pair of attached angle columns
and their entablature. This was surmounted by
an open balustrade in front of the central pair of
first-floor windows. Perhaps at the same time the
remaining ornamental features were re-formed in
stucco. On the Charles Street front the groundfloor windows were retained at about their original
size, and were treated as plain openings in the
rusticated base with straight-arched heads and
projecting keystones. Those on the St. James's
Square front were considerably increased in
height and were given bracketed sills and eared
architraves surmounted by cornice-hoods planted
on to the original first-floor bandcourse. The
original sizes of the first-floor windows were retained on the Charles Street front, but the sills of
those overlooking the square were lowered to the
bottom of the pedestal course and an iron balcony
of the basket type was fixed to each one. On both
fronts pulvinated friezes and cornice-hoods were
added above the eared architraves. No apparent
change was made to the second-floor windows,
but the attic storey was given attic pilasters at the
extremities of each front, and finished with an
attic frieze and cornice.
In 1864 the Bank bought two adjacent houses
in Charles Street (Nos. 2 and 3) and in 1875 four
more houses in that street (Nos. 4–8). (ref. 40) Between
1870 and 1895 the Bank united the ground floor
of No. 1 St. James's Square with that of the previous Nos. 2 and 3 Charles Street. (ref. 41) This eastern
part of the building, in Charles Street, was renumbered No. 1A St. James's Square: in 1913 it
contained an eighteenth-century wooden chimneypiece said to have been removed from the 'district
of Bath'. (ref. 42)
No. 1 St. James's Square was demolished in
December 1955–January 1956.
No. 2
In August 1752 Timbrell, Spencer and Barlow
came to an agreement with Hugh Boscawen,
second Viscount Falmouth, to build him a house
on the northern part of the site of the old house. (ref. 35)
On 6–7 November 1754 this northern site,
stretching back 200 feet, with a yard entrance
running down to Charles Street, was sold, together
with the new house, by Andrews, his trustee and
the three builders, to Lord Falmouth for £8200,
of which £6240 was paid to Andrews. (ref. 35) Lord
Falmouth appears as occupier in the course of
1754. (ref. 6)
Until 1923 the house was owned, and for the
greater part of the period occupied, by the Boscawen family. In that year it was sold by Viscount
Falmouth to the Canada Life Assurance Company. The house was at that time substantially
unaltered. (ref. 43) The house was destroyed in an airraid and the site sold in 1950 to the Westminster
Bank. (ref. 44)
The front of No. 2 (Plate 164a), which was
about equal in height and width with that of No. 1,
was in all respects similar to it in its original state as
described above, except that it retained its original
doorcase, and had architraves surrounding the
windows of the attic storey. The doorcase, which
appears to have been of stone, had a square-headed
architrave without ears, a pulvinated frieze and a
cornice-hood carried on console brackets. The
attic storey appears to have been rebuilt, and
it is possible that the window architraves were
added at the time of this rebuilding.
In 1818 the front of No. 2 was taken as a model
for that of No. 6.
The present office block on the site of Nos. 1
and 2 in the square and Nos. 1–5 Charles II Street
was built in 1954–6 to the design of Messrs.
Mewès and Davis for the Westminster Bank
Limited, (ref. 45) who have thus occupied part of the site
for 115 years.