No. 5
Architect, Matthew Brettingham, senior, 1748–9. Refronted in stone and porch and second storey added in 1854
by Messrs. Cubitt
The site of No. 5 was sold by the Earl of St.
Albans and Baptist May to trustees for George
Clisby on 1–2 April 1675, at the same groundrent, £15 8s. 4d., as the two houses (Nos. 6 and 7)
to the west of it. (ref. 113) The conveyance seems not to
have been enrolled. As at No. 3, it is not known
who was immediately responsible for the erection
of the house, which was completed by the following year, (ref. 6) but in December 1677 Clisby mortgaged the property to Abraham Storey who had
built the adjacent house, No. 6. (ref. 114) Clisby and
Storey appear in company with Robert Hooke,
who was also concerned in the finishing and disposal of Nos. 6 and 7, at Garraway's coffee house,
in February 1672/3. (ref. 115) It was presumably this
George Clisby who in 1685 was asked to prepare a
map of the parish (see page 30), and who, as Mr.
Clysbee, was mentioned as an appropriate person
to view the tottering steeple of St. James's Church
in 1687. (ref. 116)
The ratebook of 1676, in which the house is
first recorded, shows it occupied by Henry, second
Earl of Clarendon, who inhabited the house
during the early years of its existence. On 24–25
December 1684 Clisby sold the house to the
Countess of Thanet, (ref. 117) who had already occupied
the house in the previous year and who lived there
until 1691, when a series of short tenancies followed. (ref. 6)
The Countess had mortgaged the house in
1688, and in 1704 she, with her mortgagees, sold
it to Thomas Holt, presumably a trustee for Sir
Richard Child of Wanstead. (ref. 118) Child occupied
the house until 1711 when he and Holt sold it, on
15 November, to the soldier and diplomatist,
Thomas, first Earl of Strafford (of the second
creation), who was then ambassador extraordinary
at The Hague. (ref. 119) The Earl's family still owns
the house.
In letters to her husband from London the
Earl's newly wedded wife expressed her pleasure
with the house, although there was haggling to
report over the purchase of Child's furnishings
which included wall-glasses, marble tables, pictures over the doors and the fittings of one room
'hung with Giult Leathere the Handsomest I
ever see'. Everyone agreed that the Straffords had
obtained a very good bargain, and in the autumn,
before the purchase was finally completed, the
Countess was already arranging to provision the
house with 'Sugar, Plumbs, Spice, etc.' (ref. 120)
During the following summer workmen
cleaned and renovated the interior. (fn. a) The work
was not finished until the succeeding year but
there were apparently no important structural or
decorative alterations. A 'baithing Roome' is
mentioned and a 'Greate Roome' with a carved
cornice. At the front the ground- and first-floor
windows had sashes, but the second-floor windows
had casements, as at Lord Ossulston's house. A
'Large Mundillion Cornish' of wood ran across
the façade. (ref. 121)
In August 1713 the Earl was considering the
addition of a room at the back, as at Lord Portland's house in the square. His friend, Lord
Berkeley of Stratton, advised against this, thinking
it would darken the house 'and such a piece of
ground as you have for a garden is such an advantage in a town crowded with buildings that it is a
pity to lessen it'. Lord Berkeley obtained, however, the opinion of his own architect or builder,
Nicholas Launce, a plasterer, (fn. b) and together they
recommended the construction of a picture-gallery
like the Duke of Kent's at No. 4. Lord Berkeley
transmitted 'a pretty plain draught' of the proposed
building by Mr. Launce, but it is not known
whether it was executed. (ref. 122)
December 1725 saw the house in great danger
of destruction from the fire that burnt down No. 4
next door and which spread to the great wooden
cornice of No. 5. Two letters to the Earl of
Strafford from his brother, Peter Wentworth,
describe without undue modesty the successful
efforts by which, at the cost of a bruised shin and
the ruin of his best periwig, he organized the
preservation of the house, 'running from one
Engine to another Incourageing the men'. The
foreman of the firemen, being appealed to for more
engines, said that all those belonging to the insurance office were present but that 'he had one of
his own and if I wou'd promise he should be
rewarded he wou'd make haste and fetch it'.
Wentworth became involved in a 'scuffle' at No. 5
with another amateur helper, over the opening or
closing of windows, and violence also broke out at
Lord Palmerston's house, No. 3, on the other side
of the fire, where his lordship fell to 'beating one
of the Engine men to make him play upon his
house'. But Wentworth countered this with a distribution of cash and reported that 'as soon as his
back was turn'd I got that very Engine to play
upon yours, getting Lord Bristols people of my
side', out of fear for the safety of No. 6. (ref. 123) The
newspapers reported that No. 5 had suffered
damage to the value of a thousand pounds (ref. 124) but
Wentworth's letters make it clear that in fact
comparatively little harm was done, and the subsequent repairs were not extensive. (ref. 125)
In 1748–9 the house was rebuilt, substantially
in its present form, for the second Earl, to the
design of Matthew Brettingham the elder
(Plates 150, 151, 152, figs. 13–15), who was at the same
time building Norfolk House in the south-east
corner of the square. The Earl was a man of cultivated taste and his friend Horace Walpole has
recorded that he (the Earl) 'chose all the Ornaments' in the new house. (ref. 126)
Some incomplete estimates and bills for the
rebuilding of No. 5 exist. (ref. 127) There are no records
of the main carpenter's and bricklayer's work,
which would have been the first to have been
undertaken, nor of the smith's work.
The mason, George Mercer, gave an estimate totalling some £843 in March 1748/9.
This is endorsed 'settled at £539', the total for
which Mercer submitted another estimate in May.
His work was to include 'a Balustrade in front',
the main stairs in Portland stone, and 'Bremen
paving' in the hall. (fn. c) On the same day the plasterer, William Perritt, submitted an estimate of
£630 which was 'settled at £570'. The first
estimate from the joiner, Charles Ross, amounted
to £2682 but this was also reduced, very drastically, to £1480. Ross, described as a carpenter,
was responsible, with Thomas Nicholls, carver,
for measuring the carver's work and was also, with
Ralph Crutcher, signatory on the Earl's behalf of
an agreement of April 1748 respecting the partywall of Nos. 5 and 6 (see page 104). He was later
employed by the Earl in 1759 to design the south
wing of Wentworth Castle. (ref. 128) Two carvers were
employed, John Gilbert, whose bill of November
1750, including a good deal of decorative work,
was settled at £130, and John Hawkins, whose
bill, apparently for more utilitarian work,
amounted to £200. The plumber, Edward Ives,
was paid £46. Brettingham's own fee, for which
he gave a receipt in March 1751, was £400 'in
full for my trouble, drawings and attendance'.
Horace Walpole records that Clermont, the
French painter of 'grotesques', decorated the walls
of the 'eating-room' with a design derived from
Raphael's 'Loggie in the Vatican', presumably at
the time of this rebuilding. (ref. 129)
The interior of Brettingham's house has survived with remarkably little alteration. An
additional storey was added by Cubitts in 1854, on
the entry into the house of Lord Enfield, later
second Earl of Strafford of the new creation. At
the same time the front was refaced with stone
instead of brick, (ref. 130) the new work being designed
in a dignified and straightforward Italianate manner, perhaps re-using some of the existing stone
dressings (Plate 150a). The ground storey is rusticated, with four square-headed window openings
and a central, Roman Doric porch, now enclosed,
consisting of a pair of columns with answering
pilasters, supporting a full entablature with a
triglyphed frieze and mutule cornice. Level with
the cornice is a plain band with a blocking-course
above it and the five first-floor windows rest on a
pedestal moulding, each having a blind balustrade
of waisted, stone balusters, a similar, open balustrade enclosing the area of the porch roof. The
window openings are architraved with flanking
margins and carved consoles supporting triangular
pediments above plain friezes. The second-storey
windows have a moulded sill-band, the sills themselves breaking forward on fluted brackets, and the
openings are architraved with pulvinated friezes
and moulded cornices, the third-storey windows
having a slightly moulded sill-band and simple
architraves. The façade is crowned with a bold
modillion cornice and a balustrade with a plinth,
plain dies and a moulded capping, the slated roof
being practically invisible from ground level.
Figure 13:
No. 5 St. James's Square.
Re-drawn from Bowles's view c. 1752
Bowles's view of the square published in c.
1752 (Plate 130, fig. 13) shows that the present
first-floor window surrounds, with the balustraded
aprons, are at least the counterparts of similar
features in Brettingham's design. But Bowles is
not necessarily accurate in his delineation of the
rest of the front. Taking Norfolk House as a
comparable design it seems more probable that the
ground storey as well as the upper parts of the
house were faced with brick, the ground-floor
windows and the square openings to the second
storey being quite simply dressed, and the crowning cornice being surmounted by a balustrade
(mentioned in the accounts) partly concealing the
three pedimented dormers in the pitched roof.
Bowles shows columns or pilasters flanking the
entrance door, so it is possible that the existing
porch is an extension of the original doorway. The
plain railings to the front area, with their spear
heads and urn finials, probably also date from
Brettingham's time.
The façade is only two-thirds of the actual
width of the house which extends eastward to the
north of No. 4, with three main compartments in
front and a suite of three rooms at the rear
(figs. 14, 15). The hall (Plate 151b) is entered in
one corner and has a central door in the west wall
to a small front room, a fireplace at the rear between a pair of doorways originally leading into the
central back room, and an archway in the east wall
leading to the main staircase with two flanking
doorways, one false and the other opening into the
secondary staircase behind. The hall is plainly
fitted with a moulded skirting and chair-rail,
architraved doorcases with pulvinated friezes and
cornices, and a similar chimneypiece with lugged
architraves flanked by long carved consoles. The
opening to the main staircase has a semi-circular
arch with a narrow, carved archivolt springing
from an impost ornamented with a wave moulding,
and there is a modillion cornice and a plain
ceiling. The doors in this and the other groundfloor rooms are of mahogany with six fielded
panels, some having carved mouldings. The
decoration of the rooms is restrained in style but
the quality of design and craftsmanship is high.
The dados are panelled, generally with carved
mouldings, and the main wall faces are hung with
fabric and have enriched modillion cornices in
plaster, the ceilings being plain. All the rooms
have good marble chimneypieces, some dating
from the early nineteenth century and others
being original, that in the dining-room, the
western room at the rear, bearing the date 1750.
This room is lit by a tall, three-light window with
a flat head, formed out of a Venetian window
which is listed in the building accounts with
another still existing in the eastern rear room,
originally the library. This room has been considerably reduced in size and a corridor has been
formed at the back of the central room giving
direct access to the two others.
Figure 14:
No. 5 St. James's Square, ground-floor plan
The rectangular staircase compartment (Plate
152a) is lit from above and the stone stair rises only
to the first floor with two long flights and one
short one connecting the quarter-space landings.
The wooden balusters are formed as plain Doric
columns, with narrow blocks above and below
them, and support a moulded mahogany handrail
which is swept up at each corner and curtailed at
the bottom with a single stout baluster. The walls
are plain below first-floor level which is marked
by a moulded band, the ornamented skirting and
chair-rail being continued round the compartment.
The main wall faces above have large panels enclosed by lugged frames with enriched mouldings
and a guilloche band overlaid with Rococo ornament of shells and acanthus, the top breaking into
a scroll pediment. On the two long walls the
panels are flanked by ornamented brackets, presumably intended to support busts. Above an enriched moulding at the level of the second floor
are pairs of circular panels with festoons and drops
of foliage and flowers, not unlike the decoration
on the staircase of No. 44 Berkeley Square by
William Kent. The rich main cornice is modillioned and the coved ceiling rises to a rectangular
roof-light surrounded by an unusual guilloche
moulding.
The first-floor rear rooms are fitted in the
same manner as those on the ground floor and the
east room has been reduced in size like the library
below. The middle room (Plate 151a) has a beamed
ceiling in the Inigo Jones manner, with a large,
central octagon containing a rosette, the soffits of
the beams being decorated with guilloche moulding. The white marble chimneypiece has an
enriched architrave to the opening flanked by
female terms with panelled fronts containing drops
and supporting baskets on their heads, the enriched
cornice breaking forward above them and over a
central tablet in the frieze carved with a mask of
Apollo. The frieze on either side has a festoon
with drops. In the dado are panels with quadrant
corners, which, with flanking drops matching
those to the terms of the chimneypiece, may be
additions. The tall double doorway to the front
room is certainly an alteration; the doors are
painted instead of being polished mahogany, but
the doorcase matches the others in the room with
their carved architraves, enriched friezes with
scrolled ends and carved cornices.
Figure 15:
No. 5 St. James's Square, first-floor plan
The front rooms do not correspond to those
below, the larger compartment being to the west.
They are connected by a double doorway matching that already mentioned, and although they
retain their original doorcases, skirtings, chairrails and modillion cornices, the upper parts of the
walls were enriched in the nineteenth century
with elaborate panels in the French Rococo manner, executed in plaster, the white marble chimneypieces and the ceiling decoration being in the
same style (Plate 152b).
The rear of the house is plainly built of yellow
stock brick, the centre projecting slightly with a
pair of windows flanking an architraved and pedimented doorway on the ground floor, and on
either side the three-light windows already
described, divided by plain Doric pilasters. The
upper floors each have seven openings, with stone
sills and flat heads, and the parapet is simply
capped with stone.
Across the back of the courtyard was a twostoreyed stable building of brick (Plate 150b),
answering the upper part of the rear elevation of
the house. The first-floor windows were square
and there was a timber cornice with a pediment
over the central projection, the hipped roof being
slated. The building had a frontage to Babmays
Mews on the east. At some time in the nineteenth
century, perhaps when the house was refronted,
the courtyard was embellished with statues and
balustrading, a flight of steps leading to a terrace
across the east side in front of a low wing of
approximately the same date.
As part of the scheme for the redevelopment of
the site of No. 6, begun in 1958, the back
premises of No. 5 have been demolished and the
house is to be converted into flats, with additional
accommodation in a new wing at the north-west
corner. The four principal rooms on the first floor
are to be kept as a state suite in connexion with the
offices in No. 6, a doorway being cut through the
party-wall, but most of the original decorations
are to be preserved.