No. 8
Architects, Messrs. Robert Angell and Curtis, 1939
This house was the last in the square to be
granted away by the representatives of the St.
Albans interest, being owned by the Earl's heirs
until 1721. The earliest evidence of its existence
is in 1676 when it was occupied by the French
ambassador, Honoré Courtin, on a yearly tenancy
from the Earl of St. Albans at £400 per annum. (ref. 165)
It first appears in the ratebooks in the following
year, and until 1684 was occupied by Sir Cyril
Wyche, the Earl of St. Albans, or the French
ambassador for whom St. Albans seems usually to
have paid the rates. It was here that in July 1684
Henry Compton, Bishop of London, received
from the representatives of the deceased Earl the
title-deeds of the site of St. James's Church and
took sustenance during an interval in the ceremony
of consecrating the church (see page 33). In
1685 the Earl of Pembroke occupied the house
and from 1686–8 the French ambassador was
rated as occupant. (fn. a) From 1689 to 1693 the
house was inhabited by the Earl of St. Albans's
nephew, Henry, Lord Dover.
In June 1721 (ref. 167) Lord Dover's executor and
heirs sold the house to Sir Matthew Decker, a
banker, who lived here until his death in 1749,
after which his widow continued to occupy the
house until 1759. Bowles's view published in c.
1752 compared with Sutton Nicholls's shows that
the house then still retained its original appearance
except for the insertion of a new doorway of
round-headed form (Plates 128, 130).
In 1768 Sir Sampson Gideon, later Lord
Eardley, bought the house from the trustee and
heiresses of Lady Decker, (ref. 168) and soon afterwards
the house was altered or perhaps rebuilt for him
by the firm of Henry Holland, senior. A record of
the work of the mason, Joseph Dixon, survives (ref. 169)
and includes work to the value of some £374 on
the house, stables and street paving: old chimneypieces were cleaned and reset and plain mason's
work carried out. It was perhaps at this time that
the entrance to the house, which in c. 1752 was
still in the square, was moved to York (now Duke
of York) Street as shown on a plan of 1793 by
John Soane.
Sir Sampson left the house in 1784 and for
twelve years it stood empty.<Substantial works were carried out for the Spanish Ambassador, the Marquis del Campo, in 1787-8.> Towards the end of
this period Soane surveyed it. (ref. 170) In 1795 the
house was bought by the younger Josiah Wedgwood for £8500, and a further £7000 is said to
have been spent on the house, (ref. 171) the showroom
here in 1809 being illustrated in a plate in Ackermann's Repository of the Arts, and the plain
exterior in the Ackermann view of the square in
1812 (Plate 131). Wedgwood and his partner,
Thomas Byerley, used the premises until, trade
apparently becoming depressed, they were given
up in 1830. (ref. 172) In August 1830 the property
was sold by Wedgwood to the Earl of Romney. (ref. 173)
Until 1839 the house was occupied by the Earl as
a private residence but was not again used as a
private residence alter that date, being usually
occupied as a club-house. From 1840 to 1854
it housed the Erechthcum, a club of a literary and
scientific character. From 1855 to 1876 it was
occupied by the Charity Commissioners. (ref. 6) During
the period 1877–9 the house was given a new
stucco façade, and the entrance moved back again
from York Street to the St. James's Square
front. (ref. 174)
Figure 20:
No. 8 St. James's Square, plans. Re-drawn from plan of 1853
A photograph In the Westminster Public
Library of the house in its altered state shows a
fairly orthodox 'palazzo' front of six bays to St.
James's Square, the basement storey being rusticated with horizontal channelling and the two
smooth-faced upper storeys finished with raised
quoins and a bracketed cornice (Plate 201b). In
the basement storey the four outer bays contained
windows framed by flat architraves, each one with
a keystone stretching up to a small cornice at firstfloor level, while the two middle bays were occupied by a group of three round-arched openings
consisting of a doorway with low, narrow sidelights. These openings had moulded archivolts
springing from pilasters, and before them was a
wide Doric porch supported on paired rusticated
columns, the outer column of each pair being
square. It was a slightly eccentric porch in that
the columns were rusticated with plain narrow
bands only slightly raised and the frieze had triglyphs only above the columns. The second
storey had tall windows with moulded architraves
and over them were placed enriched pulvinated
friezes and pediments supported by small brackets,
the pediments all being triangular except for a
segmental one over the second window from each
end. Beneath the windows ran a pedestal-course
which broke into a balustrade under each of the
four outer windows and was continued round the
top of the entrance porch to form a balustraded balcony before the two middle windows. A small
cornice underlined the windows of the third storey,
which were adorned only with moulded architraves, and the bracketed cornice above them was
finished with a parapet having half-concealed
behind it the five pedimented dormer windows
shown in Ackermann's view of 1812.
Between 1879 and 1892 the Junior Oxford
and Cambridge, the Vine, the York and the
Junior Travellers' Clubs occupied the building. (ref. 6)
In 1893 the Sports Club took over the premises,
which they subsequently bought. In 1937 a proposal by them for rebuilding with accommodation
for offices on the upper floors was submitted for
planning approval and accepted, (ref. 175) but this was
not proceeded with, and in 1938 the club moved
across the square to the East India United Service
Club, with which it had amalgamated. In the
same year Robert Angell and Curtis submitted a
proposal to rebuild No. 8 and its back premises for
office use, on behalf of Messrs. G. E. Wallis and
Sons of Maidstone who had acquired the
property. (ref. 176) After refusal by the London County
Council to permit the erection of a building higher
than eighty feet and the rejection by the Minister
of Health of an appeal by other developers against
a similar refusal at the site of Norfolk House, a
revised application was submitted in January 1939,
and permission was given for the erection of the
present office block, which was built in the course
of that year. (ref. 175) The building is now occupied by
the Ministry of Labour.
York Street Chapel
During much of the history of No. 8 St. James's
Square its back premises contained a chapel fronting York Street (in 1937 renamed Duke of York
Street) and forming part of the freehold site of
No. 8. The ratebooks mention the 'French
chapel' in York Street in 1676 and 1677, when
the French ambassador was occupying No. 8.
Henceforward, all mention of the chapel disappears from the ratebooks until the end of the
eighteenth century. From December 1689 until
April 1694 the building, despite the tenure
of the adjacent house by the Catholic Lord
Dover, was occupied at a rent of £45 per annum
by a French church of the Protestant persuasion.
This was a daughter church of that in Jewin
Street, and afterwards moved to Swallow Street.
On its departure, Lord Dover presented it
with the flooring, gallery and pulpit. (ref. 177) Dasent (ref. 178)
says that the Spanish ambassador fitted up
the chapel again during his occupancy of Ormonde House from 1716 to 1718: no evidence
of this has been found, but it is likely enough
that he would have been able to do this with
the consent of the owner of the site, his coreligionist, the Dowager Lady Dover.
For most of the eighteenth century no evidence
has been found that this chapel site was used as
such. Strype does not mention a chapel in his
description of York Street in 1720, nor does the
deed by which the site of No. 8 was sold by Lord
Dover's executor and heirs in 1721 (see above).
Mid eighteenth-century lists of London chapels do
not include it and it is not shown on Rocque's map
of 1746. It is, again, not mentioned in the deed
conveying the site in 1768 (see above), and
Zachary Chambers's map of 1769 appears to show
this part of the York Street frontage as a vacant
site. The absence of any reference to the building
might be consistent with its occult use as a
Catholic chapel, but the disposal of the freehold by
representatives of the Catholic Jermyns in 1721
makes this the less likely.
There was apparently no Catholic chapel on
this site in 1782, but in 1786 a chapel was being
established here by Dr. Thomas Hussey, senior
chaplain to the Spanish Embassy and afterwards
first President of Maynooth and Bishop of Waterford. The chapel was probably run in connexion
with the Spanish Embassy. (ref. 179) <The chapel was rebuilt or wholly remodelled for the Spanish Ambassador, the Marquis del Campo, in 1787-8, to designs prepared by an architect in Madrid.> A Solemn High
Mass for George III's recovery from insanity was
celebrated here in the spring of 1789, and a requiem service for Bishop Talbot in February
1790. (ref. 180) In the previous month it had been
announced that 'The Chapel in York-street, St.
James's square, is to be purchased and appropriated
to the very different purpose of a place of polite
amusement under the direction of the Chevalier
St. George.' (ref. 181) In 1791 the chapel reappears in
the ratebooks but as an empty building. Its closing
was presumably connected with the opening of the
chapel adjoining the Spanish Embassy in Spanish
Place by Dr. Hussey at the end of 1791. (ref. 182)
The empty chapel building is shown on Soane's
plan of December 1793 (ref. 170) and also on Horwood's
map of 1794; for the years 1792–4 inclusive, it is
shown empty in the ratebooks. In 1795 it was
bought, together with No. 8 St. James's Square,
by Josiah Wedgwood (see above) who is said to have
paid one-third of the total purchase price of
£8500 in respect of the chapel. (ref. 171) From 1795 to
1797 the Rev. James Tuffs was rated for the
chapel; in 1798 it was empty again (ref. 6) but in the
following year a seven-year lease was taken by a
community of Swedenborgians who had previously
occupied a church in Cross Street, Hatton Garden,
under the Rev. Joseph Proud. He began his ministry at the 'larger and more elegant Chapel' in York
Street in October of that year. In 1806 the lease
was renewed at an increased rent. The congregation
is said to have been 'very numerous and respectable',
and to have attracted the interest of the Duke of
Sussex. On the expiry of the second lease in 1813,
a further intended increase in rent persuaded the
congregation to move to Lisle Street. (ref. 183) The
Swedenborgian community is said to have rebuilt
the chapel, described in 1810 as 'a large handsome
square building . . . the principal place belonging
to this sect in London'. (ref. 184) The Swedenborgians
were succeeded by a congregation of Baptists under
the Rev. John Stevens, who had previously worshipped in Grafton Street, and in 1824 moved to
Meard Street. (ref. 185) They were succeeded by a congregation of Unitarians, for whom William Agar
took a lease in September 1824 (ref. 186) and who
opened the chapel under the Rev. S. W. Browne
in December 1824. (ref. 187) In 1832 it was said (ref. 188) that
the Unitarians had 'erected a beautiful chapel',
but a contemporary Unitarian said only that the
chapel was 'fitted-up' by 'a gentleman educated in
the principles of the Established Church', perhaps the first minister. The same contemporary
commented that 'The influence of fashion and
the dread of censure' retarded the growth of the
church, but that its departure was caused by the
congregation's 'being unexpectedly called upon to
relinquish the Chapel'. The lease had been due to
expire in the autumn of 1831: there was some
provision for its renewal but this was perhaps prevented in consequence of the change of ownership
of the site, which had been sold in August 1830 by
Wedgwood to the Earl of Romney (see above).
Rumour among the Unitarians was that 'some
little jealous feeling on the part of influential persons of the English communion was mingled with
this transaction, and that the removal of such an
establishment from the immediate neighbourhood
of an episcopal palace [London House, No. 32
St. James's Square] and a national Church was a
consummation devoutly to be wished'. The Unitarian occupation of the chapel ended in 1832 or
1833, and in the latter year the congregation
opened a church in Little Portland Street. (ref. 189)
The premises were henceforward used as an
Anglican proprietary chapel until 1876. (fn. b) In
1865 Lord Carnarvon, who had bought the back
premises of No. 8, considered converting the
chapel into a warehouse, but instead granted a
lease to the Rev. A. Stopford Brooke, whose Life
and Letters of F. W. Robertson, published in that
year, had brought him notoriety as a spokesman of
Broad Church principles. (ref. 190) At that time the
chapel seems not to have enjoyed a prosperous
reputation, a fact which Stopford Brooke attributed to the practice of 'having fools in occupation
of the Chapel', but under his ministry, which commenced in April 1866, the chapel attracted a large
and fashionable congregation. In February 1867
Brooke wrote, 'These Tories haunt me. They
take pews, they write me letters, they put their
daughters under me, and all my radicalism goes
down their thrapple without a wry face.' (ref. 191) Here
Brooke preached in 1872 his course of sermons
on 'Theology in the English Poets'. During
the latter part of his ministry the exterior of the
chapel was described as being 'exactly after the
model of old Dissenting meeting-houses. But
the interior is neat and even elegant.' (ref. 192) On
the expiry of the lease in 1875, Brooke moved to
Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury, and the chapel in
York Street was then closed. (ref. 193)
The site, together with that of No. 8 St. James's
Square, is now covered by the office-block occupied by the Ministry of Labour.