East India And Sports Club
Architect for rebuilding, Charles Lee, 1865
This building occupies the site of two earlier
houses, here given the numbers they would have
borne in the present sequence.
No. 16
This site was agreed to be granted in 1670 to
St. Albans's nephew, Thomas Jermyn, at a small
reserved ground-rent of only £3 per annum. (ref. 343)
(fn. a)
By 1676 a house had been built by John Angier,
who also built No. 7, and whose name was given
to the access-street running at the back of the
houses on the north side of the square (now Ormond Yard and Apple Tree Yard). (ref. 343) At No. 16
the usual procedure observed in the square was reversed and instead of a builder possessed of a grant
from St. Albans selling a newly built house to a
grandee, the grandee evidently sold the site in or
after 1676 to the builder, and the Angier family
retained the freehold until 1785.
John Angier was probably the builder of that
name who in 1674, the same year in which No. 7
was agreed to be built, was paid by the Office of
Works for carpentry at the Cockpit in Whitehall. (ref. 344) He may doubtless be identified with the
John Angier the elder, of Westminster, gentleman, whose will dated April 1694 was proved in
February 1694/5. (ref. 345) This shows that he was a
native of Somerset, who lived in a leasehold house
'in the new palace' at Westminster. The sum of
£160 was to be spent on his funeral. The will
mentions twelve houses in Westminster and St.
James's, and others in Arundel Street and Norfolk
Street. It also mentions a debt of £1510 owed to
him by Sir Robert Bacon. The bequests included
£10 to the Governors of the Green Coat Hospital
in Tothill Fields towards 'the building the other
parte of the said Hospitall' and £5 'to be distributed
amongst poore Carpenters and Carpenters' widows
who wrought and workt with me'.
This John had a son John and a son Bernard,
the latter perhaps the 'Barnard Angier, carpenter'
who worked on the Guard House at Windsor
Castle in 1685–6. (ref. 346) A grandson was named
Burrage, and the elder John's will included a bequest of £10 to a daughter of Burrage Salter, deceased, doubtless the builder of that name who
worked in the St. James's area.
The ownership of No. 16 descended from the
elder John to his son John, of Northaw, Hertfordshire, thence to the younger John's nephew,
Burrage Angier, esquire, sometimes described as
of Northaw and sometimes as of All Hallows,
Barking. From him it passed to his son, also
Burrage, who sold the property. (ref. 347)
No. 16 was at first, like its neighbours to the
north, held for rather short terms. The first occupant appears in 1676, when the duellist and rake,
the so-called Lord Purbeck, was rated for the
house at a figure so much higher than No. 14 or
Halifax House (Nos. 17–18) as to suggest that he
may have been assessed also for No. 15 and perhaps
intended to occupy both. In 1678 he fought a
duel in the square (ref. 77) and vacated the house in the
same year.
In 1705 Sir John Germain took the house on
lease, and after his death in 1718 his widow, Lady
Betty Germain, lived here for another half-century: in 1730 her rent was £200 per annum. (ref. 348)
The views of c. 1722 and c. 1752 (Plates 128, 130)
seem to show what was externally still the original
house. From 1783 it stood empty (ref. 6) and in January
1785 George Anson, who had inherited the
adjacent No. 15, bought it for the low price of
£3500 from Burrage Angier of Woodford, Essex,
esquire, and others. (ref. 326) Anson's son Thomas, who
succeeded him in 1789, pulled the house down in
the following year, (ref. 6) immediately before carrying
out the completion and embellishment of No. 15.
A small part of the site of No. 16 was taken into
the back premises of No. 15, but it is not known
whether any more ambitious scheme for the use or
incorporation of the site of No. 16 was considered.
In June 1804 Anson sold the still empty and
slightly reduced site for £4000 to the merchant
Edmund Boehm. (ref. 326) A new house was built here
by 1807. (ref. 6) Nothing is known of it beyond the
representations in Ackermann's view of 1812
(Plate 131) and the print of Queen Caroline
driving from No. 17 to the House of Lords in
1820, reproduced by Dasent. (ref. 349) These suggest
that the front of the house was designed in the
manner of the Wyatts. The 'Queen Caroline'
print clearly shows part of the front, recording
that the ground storey was treated as a rusticated
arcade of four bays, the arches containing round-headed windows within plain margins and, at the
south end, a doorway like that of No. 15. A balcony, projecting on plain trusses and furnished
with a simple iron railing, extended across the
front at second-storey level. The upper face of
brickwork contained two tiers of four windows,
casements below and sashes above, all set in plain
openings with, presumably, flat gauged brick
arches. Between the two tiers were sunk panels,
which the Ackermann print suggests may have
contained ornamental plaques. The simple
crowning cornice was surmounted by a high
parapet, partly concealing the dormers in the mansard roof. In 1820 Boehm's estates were sold, in
consequence of his bankruptcy. (ref. 350) The house
stood empty in 1844 (ref. 6) and was not again used as a
private residence. In the following year it was
taken by the Prince of Wales Club, and in 1847–9
was occupied by the Free Trade Club. (ref. 351)
The present occupiers, the East India United
Service Club (now amalgamated with the Sports
Club), which had been founded in 1849 to provide a rendezvous for officers of the East India
Company on furlough and also for retired servants
of the Company, (ref. 352) took the house on a lease from
Lord Clanricarde at £600 per annum (ref. 353) and held
its inaugural dinner in the house on 1 January
1850. (ref. 352) The membership consisted of 'the Company's servants, clerical, civil, military, naval and
medical, together with officers of H.M.'s Army
and Navy who had served in India, certain law
officers in India, and ex-Captains of the Company's late maritime service'. (ref. 352) In 1861–2 the
club bought the freehold of the site reaching back
to Duke Street, from Lord Clanricarde for
£18,750. (ref. 354) Having in 1863 bought No. 17 also,
for £14,500 (see page 159), the club had the two
properties rebuilt as a club-house in 1865 by
George Myers and Sons under the direction of the
surveyor or architect, Charles Lee of Golden
Square. (ref. 355) The plan and the arrangement of the
window openings suggests that part of the fabric of
the more northerly house, No. 16, was retained.
The cost is said to have been £25,188. (ref. 356) The
total capital cost of the club-house thus amounted
to £58,438. In 1939 the club amalgamated with
the Sports Club, which had previously occupied
No. 8. Two storeys were added, and 'much
improved provision was made for lady guests,
with a separate entrance in Duke Street'. (ref. 357)
The amalgamated clubs continue to occupy the
premises under the title of the East India and
Sports Club.
The club-house now has a uniform stuccoed
front, seven windows wide, which rises to a height
of three storeys above a semi-basement (Plate
124a). Except for the similarity of the window
arrangement to that of the former No. 16 there is
nothing about it to suggest a date earlier than
1865, although the lofty storeys of the old No. 16
could easily have been adapted to a Victorian
design. Lee designed, or redesigned, the front in
the 'palazzo' style introduced by Barry for his
club-houses, but with much less success and with
the introduction of some un-Italian features of a
heavy Victorian character. The round-arched
windows of the ground storey, elevated clear of
an area-balustrade, are deeply recessed between
paired panelled pilasters which extend down below
the windows to rest on a bandcourse at groundfloor level, the space immediately beneath each
window being filled by a large sunk panel. The
capitals of the pilasters are linked by a moulded
impost band and from them spring heavily
moulded archivolts, each one surmounted by a
circular panel similarly moulded. The second
window from the south is developed into a canted
bay with narrow sidelights similar to the main one,
but without circular panels over the archivolt.
From the middle bay projects the entrance porch,
its two fat square columns rising from the pedestals
of the area-balustrade to support a round arch with
a lightly moulded archivolt, the keystone of which
is inscribed EI/SC and has immediately above it a
plaque bearing a five-pointed star encircled by a
wreath. Similar but narrower openings pierce the
sides of the porch, and round its head runs a dentilled cornice. The outer faces of the columns and
the spandrels of the arch were, until quite recently,
covered with decorative panels, those in the spandrels each bearing an Asiatic figure, while the
archivolt was more heavily moulded with a pair of
supporting brackets and had over it a circular
panel like those over the windows. (ref. 358) The second
storey, which is about the same height as the
ground storey, has square-headed windows enclosed by round-arched architraves, the arched
heads of these being filled with stucco 'fans'. Each
window is flanked by Corinthian pilasters and
over them is an entablature finished with a triangular pediment, its apex almost touching the sill of
the window above. Before the windows extends a
continuous balustraded balcony, its deep projection slightly increased over the entrance porch.
The second bay from the south end, like the one
beneath it in the ground storey, is developed into a
canted bay, but with extremely plain sidelights
having over each of them a square sunk panel.
The third storey is defined by a stringcourse at sill
level, its windows having shouldered architraves
each finished with an odd little frieze and cornice
and separated by large sunk panels. The second
window from the south end differs slightly in
being flanked by narrow panels, a shouldered
architrave enclosing the whole feature. Above it is
an entablature with a cornice which breaks forward in the centre below a triangular pediment.
Completing the elevation is an entablature of
rather less than Italian grandeur, its frieze richly
decorated and its dentilled cornice surmounted by
a patterned balustrade.
The area covered by the building has been
considerably increased by modern additions but
the club-house as rebuilt by Lee seems to have
consisted only of the present main block on to St.
James's Square. The ground-floor plan of this
block comprises an entrance hall, with the staircase compartment behind it, flanked to the south
by the dining-room and to the north by a pair of
smaller rooms, one behind the other, which are
together known as the grill-room. The diningroom is large, running the depth of the building
and taking up the whole width of the former No.
17. It is lit at either end by three windows, the
centre one being built out as a canted bay. The
easterly portion of the grill-room is lit by two windows but at the western end the original arrangements have been altered by the later addition of a
single-storey building at the back. Leading off the
grill-room to the south, behind the main staircase,
is a small service room, and to the south of that
again is a secondary staircase which, though
entirely modern, probably replaces an older one.
The southern part of the first floor is occupied by
a large reading-room corresponding to the diningroom below, while to the north of it are two more
rooms overlooking the square, a small committeeroom with one window and a room now used as a
television-room with three windows. Behind the
television-room, to the north of the staircase, is
the library and leading off the library to the south
is the small map-room. Bedrooms occupy the
southern portion of the third floor but there is also
a billiard-room and a card-room.
The rooms are decorated after the manner of
the older club-houses, but with greater regard to
economy and with an unpleasing Victorian
heaviness. The dining-room and the readingroom are the most elaborate, with moulded beams
supported by carved brackets, panelled doors and
shutters, some of the latter with outsize egg-anddart mouldings, and ornate wooden chimneypieces. The division between the hall and the
staircase compartment is marked by a moulded
beam, and supporting this at either end is a pair of
fluted composite columns with plain antae. The
columns and antae are covered with marbled paint
and have unusually high pedestals, giving them a
rather foreshortened appearance. The staircase
beyond them is built round an open well and has
cast-iron balusters. The best feature of the interior is a series of white marble chimneypieces in
the grill-room, the committee-room, the televisionroom, the library and the map-room. While these
are of no special interest they do show a lightness of
touch which is not found elsewhere in the building, and since they are all on the northern side of
it they could be a survival from the former club-house. The first two are carved with fruit and
flowers, while those in the television-room and the
library have deep mantel-shelves supported by
caryatids. The chimneypiece in the map-room
has panelled pilasters and a fluted frieze, all with
metal ornament, and the mantel-shelf has a
reeded edge.
No. 17
This house existed as an independent building
only between 1726 and 1865. Before 1726 its
site formed, with that of its southern neighbour,
No. 18, the site of Halifax House, and from 1865
it has formed, with the site of its northern neighbour, No. 16, the site of the club-house of the
East India and Sports Club.
The club-house has been dealt with under
No. 16. The history of Halifax House is given
here.
Halifax House
In October 1669 Henry Jermyn, acting on
behalf of his uncle, the Earl of St. Albans, agreed
with George Savile, Lord (later first Marquis of)
Halifax, to grant him a site on the northern corner
of the square and King Street (then called Charles
Street), with an eighty-foot frontage to the square,
reserving a rent of £24 12s. per annum. (ref. 359) In
March 1669/70 the grant was made (ref. 360) on the
same day as that to Lord Belasyse on the opposite
side of the square. The rent was to commence
from Midsummer 1670. (fn. b) The house is first
recorded in the ratebooks in 1673, when it was
listed under King Street where the entrance was
situated. Here Halifax had his town residence for
the rest of his life, (ref. 362) and was succeeded in occupation of the house by his son, the second Marquis,
who lived here until his death in 1700. The
second Marquis's widow remarried and continued
to live here with her second husband, the first
Duke of Roxburgh, until 1719.
Little is known of the house, which Sutton
Nicholls shows to have shared the mainly uniform
appearance of the rest of the square. When it was
offered for sale in 1724 its four floors were described as follows: 'The first contains 8 Rooms,
with a Hall, and long Gallery 13 Foot high, a
large Kitchen 19 Foot, a Servants-Hall and 3
other Rooms; the 2nd has 8 Rooms 15 Foot high,
and 9 Rooms with 2 Galleries, between 9 and 10
Foot; the 3rd has 10 Rooms and 2 Passages
11 Foot and 6 Rooms about 8 Foot high; the 4th
contains 9 Garrets between 8 & 9 Foot high.
Closets on every Floor, 4 Stair Cases, large
Cellars, and Offices for all manner of Business.' (ref. 363)
In 1719 an Act vested Halifax House in trustees for its sale. (ref. 364) An undated 'Proposal about
Purchasing Hallifax-House' among the papers of
Sir George Savile, a cousin of the second Marquis,
records his willingness to pay £5200 for the house,
being sixteen years' purchase at a valuation of
£325 per annum. In this proposal the house was
said to be Visibly in danger of falling' and to be in
need of complete rebuilding. (ref. 365) On 29 February1 March 1723/4, however, the house was sold
for £6500 to John Henry Merttins of London,
jeweller, (ref. 366) who some years later probably contemplated buying Chandos House and in 1736 was
the owner of No. 6 Park Place.
Sir George Savile immediately engaged in
negotiations with Merttins for the repurchase of
Halifax House. (ref. 367) These proved abortive, perhaps essentially because neither party had much
confidence in the other, but overtly because of
disagreement over the cost of obtaining a royal
sign manual permitting the rebuilding of the site.
This was thought to be necessary because of the
proviso in the original Crown grant of the freehold to the Earl of St. Albans that any building
should be according to the 'designe and plottes'
approved by royal warrant (see page 58), which
the prospective developers evidently considered
might be held to apply equally to subsequent rebuilding. Two copies of Merttins's proposed
petition for the sign manual survive, of March and
April 1724, (ref. 368) the former asking for permission to
rebuild 'as shall be most Conformable and Agreeable to the said Square of Building', the latter
simply to rebuild 'as may be thought most proper
and convenient' by the petitioner. On 29 September 1724 Merttins wrote to Savile, after a lapse in
their negotiations, renewing his offer of the house
and reporting that the Crown officers' preparation
of the sign manual was so far advanced 'that they
ask me for ye draught of my designe & then it will
be complyd with if it is handsom: as I doe not intend nor think it nesicary for me to build I shall
give none least it should prove an incumbrance to
me, but if you please to send up your draught I can
gett it past'. (ref. 369) In fact, however, the sign manual
granted to Merttins bears the date of this letter. (ref. 370) It
allowed him to build houseson the front to the square,
with shops or other small buildings in KingStreet and
Duke Street 'provided that the Houses to be built
towards the Square be handsome Houses and not
unsuitable to the other buildings in the said Square'. (fn. c)
Merttins had meanwhile offered the house unsuccessfully for public sale in June and July (ref. 372) and
the negotiations with Savile, who repeatedly
accused him of 'triffling' and declared his determination not to surrender 'one hair of my Wigg
more', also fell through. It was to the carpenter,
Thomas Phillips of St. George's, Hanover Square,
that Merttins eventually sold the property, as late
as July 1726, seemingly at only a very small profit,
for £6550. (ref. 373) Phillips had then already pulled
down the old house and built two new soberly
designed houses fronting the square, as well as four
others in King Street. In doing so he was thought
by the Trustees for the square to have made an
encroachment of two feet with the front railings
of the houses, and in the summer and autumn of
1726 he was warned about this, (ref. 374) with what result is not known. The debris resulting from his
activities continued to give trouble to the Trustees
in the following summer. (ref. 375)
In January 1726/7 Phillips granted leases of
three of the four small houses built by him in King
Street, on the back part of the site, to William
Pickering, the painter-stainer of St. James's Street,
John Mist of St. Anne's, Westminster, paviour,
and Williams Ludbey of St. James's, Westminster,
mason, respectively, for two hundred years at £13
per annum each. The westernmost, leased to
Pickering, was on the corner of Duke Street. (ref. 376)
In March 1727/8 Phillips sold his interest in these
three houses outright to Martin Caulfield Basil of
Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, esquire. (ref. 377) The
fourth house, adjacent to the eastward, was occupied by Phillips himself in February 1733/4. (ref. 378) It
thus seems possible that the three lessees in King
Street were associated with Phillips in the rebuilding of the site.
The twin houses in the square are shown in
perspective by Bowles, in his view published in
c. 1752 (Plate 130), and in elevation by Banks
in his engraving of 1820 (reproduced by Dasent),
depicting Queen Caroline's daily progress from
Lady Francis's house. The uniform fronts,
each four windows wide and four storeys high,
were simply designed and faced with brick,
probably brown stocks, both fronts being bounded
and separated by wide pilasters of brick, probably
fine red rubbers, laid in rustic courses up to
the main cornice, which extended below the
attic storey. The windows had barred sashes,
recessed in plain openings with stone sills on consoles and flat arches of gauged brickwork. By
1820 an iron-railed balcony had been added to the
principal storey of No. 18, the windows having
been lengthened and provided with casements.
The doorway had also been removed to the side
elevation in King Street, if Bowles is correct in
showing that it originally balanced the doorway of
No. 17, which is in the opening on the right of the
middle pier, framed in a doorcase composed of an
architrave and cornice. Banks shows a plain
bandcourse above the ground storey, but this is not
visible in Bowles's engraving.
It is quite evident that the two houses built by
Phillips were designed with mirrored plans. Each
house was composed of an almost square main
block and a back wing, that of No. 17 lying against
the north boundary of the site, and that of No. 18
against King Street. It was, therefore, of considerable advantage to both houses that the space
between the wings was turned to account as a common courtyard or garden. (ref. 379)
The newly built house on the northern part of
the Halifax House site (No. 17) was sold in June
1726 by Phillips to Mary, Countess of Bradford,
for £5400. (ref. 380) The Bradfords occupied the house
for some sixty-four years. An inventory exists of
the furnishings in 1766 (ref. 381) when the house was
occupied by Sir Henry Bridgeman, nephew of the
fourth Earl of Bradford and himself later the first
Baron Bradford. In the hall, where a 'Slate for
Messages' was hung, stood a sedan-chair and poles.
Throughout the house almost all the furniture was
of mahogany, with a few japanned pieces. An
Axminster and a Turkey carpet and three Wilton
carpets are mentioned. Large pier-glasses and
white and gilt girandoles gave brilliance to the
rooms. The window curtains were of crimson or
yellow silk on the ground floor, and of blue
damask on the first floor, where the gilt furniture
was also upholstered in the same material and three
of the four rooms were hung with blue paper. On
this floor the great drawing-room had a 'rich
marble chimney piece' with jasper columns. A
harpsichord and music desks stood in the same
room, and a spinet in an upper room. Two large
mahogany bookcases are mentioned, in the
drawing-room and Sir Henry Bridgeman's dressing-room, one with a bust in the pediment and the
other with five bronze figures on top. There were
water-closets on the ground and first floors. The
garden is not described but the 'Court' contained
seventeen tubs and boxes and fifty-five 'pans' for
shrubs and flowers. The windows to the square
had external Venetian sun-shades in green. The
furnishings, excluding paintings and china, were
valued at some £1983 plus £375 for lookingglasses, lustres and so on.
In March 1790 Sir Philip Francis bought the
house from Sir Henry Bridgeman for £5250. (ref. 382)
The house was surveyed for Sir Philip by 'Mr.
Craig', perhaps C. A. Craig of the Office of
Works, and repairs costing upwards of £500 were
carried out by E. Gray. (ref. 383) In April 1791 Sir
Philip wrote to his friend Sir Robert Chambers of
his removal to 'a very convenient house in St.
James's Square. . . . The name of the situation
sounds well, but you would be much mistaken in
concluding that I lived in a palace or at all like a
prince.' (ref. 384) The house was occupied for a time in
1820 by Queen Caroline. In 1837 the Francis's
vacated the house (ref. 6) and in July 1839 sold it to
John Howell of West Wickham, esquire, (ref. 385) later
described as of Rutland Gate. (ref. 386) From that year
until 1842 the house was occupied by the Colonial
Club, (ref. 6) and from 1842 to 1862 by Howell who
let out the rooms as 'Club Chambers'. (ref. 387) In 1845
they were said to be worth some £1500 per
annum gross to him. (ref. 388)
In October 1863 the East India United Service
Club, which occupied No. 16, bought the house
from Howell and his mortgagees (ref. 389) and in 1865
its site was incorporated in that of the new club-house (see pages 155–6).