No. 18
Architects for rebuilding, probably Messrs. Elger and
Kelk, 1846
The early history of this site as part of Halifax
House and its rebuilding by Thomas Phillips is
discussed under No. 17.
From 1727 to 1733 the newly built house was
occupied by Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, (ref. 6) but
Thomas Phillips retained the freehold until
February 1733/4 when, Chesterfield having
vacated the house, he sold it to Sir John Heathcote
of Normanton, Rutland. Together with the
house-property, which ran back 127 feet along
King Street, Phillips sold stables and a coachhouse, giving an additional frontage of some 18
feet to King Street and also a frontage to Duke
Street. (ref. 390)
Probably early in 1805, the house was surveyed
by Soane for a prospective purchaser, Lord
Eliot. (ref. 391) He described the house, built eighty
years before, as 'very old'. The front door in King
Street was 'rather low', and the best staircase
wound over it. This staircase was of stone and
rose only one storey. A back staircase was also of
stone. Soane observed that the house was 'very
open behind' but thought the £7000 being asked
for it an 'enormous' sum. Lord Eliot went elsewhere, and the house was taken by Lord Castlereagh, later the second Marquis of Londonderry.
In January 1830 the third Marquis of Londonderry and Lord Castlereagh (later the fourth
Marquis) sold the house for £14,000 to Sir John
Beckett of Somerby, Lincolnshire, (ref. 392) whose
representatives owned the house until 1943. In
1831 Sir John Beckett let the house furnished to
the Oxford and Cambridge University Club, (ref. 393)
which had occupied it since June of the previous
year and was succeeded there in 1838 by the Army
and Navy Club until 1845. (ref. 6) In October 1845
the house was empty and the redevelopment of the
site, providing three additional houses in King
Street, was impending. By this the height of the
buildings at the back of No. 18 was to be increased
and the courtyard encroached upon, while the
open way from King Street was to be built over.
These changes, depriving the back of the house of
the 'very open' character on which Soane had
commented, were also thought by John Howell,
the owner of No. 17 northward, to diminish the
light and air at the back of his 'Club Chambers'
and greatly to reduce their value. The intervention of the Office of Metropolitan Buildings was
sought by Howell's architect, Marsh Nelson, and
the records of the case give information about the
alterations at No. 18. (ref. 394) In the negotiations
arising out of the dispute the architect acting on
behalf of Sir John Beckett was the Camdenite
ecclesiologist, R. C. Carpenter, but the work was
being undertaken by the builders, Elger and Kelk
(later Sir John Kelk), of South Street, Grosvenor
Square, and it was doubtless they who provided the
florid design. (fn. a) <The architect was John Johnson.> In September 1845 Sir John
Beckett had agreed to grant a lease of No. 18 and
its back premises to Kelk as soon as the house in
the square had been 'altered and completed' and
the new houses in King Street built. (ref. 396) In October the demolition of the old back premises was
begun. A survey was made by the Office of
Metropolitan Buildings at the urgent request of
Marsh Nelson, whose opinion of the damaging
effect on the value of No. 17 was supported by
Barry, Hardwick, Pennethorne and Tite. A few
days later, however, the case came to an abrupt
end with the decision of the official referees that
they had no jurisdiction, probably because the
encroachments complained of were at the back. (ref. 394)
Tite had spoken in his deposition of the intention 'to pull down the corner house', and a plan (ref. 396)
agreed between the disputing parties described
No. 18 as 'to be pulled down'. But the present
architectural character of the front to St. James's
Square discussed below (Plate 201a) makes it seem
evident that, as the lease to Kelk suggests, the
house was only altered, although the three in King
Street were wholly new-built. (fn. b)
In July 1846 Sir John Beckett granted ninetynine-year leases of No. 18 and of one of the three
new houses in King Street to Kelk, at £100 and
£70 per annum respectively. (ref. 395) No. 18 was used
as lodgings until a recent period.
The present exterior is designed in a lively
Italianate manner, freely adapting the forms of a
Renaissance palazzo. It has painted cement
fronts to St. James's Square and King Street of
four and three bays respectively which are
divided horizontally into three single-storey stages
by small cornices, each stage being bounded by
raised quoins except at the northern end of the St.
James's Square front. A deeply projecting cornice
crowns the composition, and beneath it runs a tall
frieze in which are contrived the small square
windows of an attic storey. The relatively low
ground storey is rusticated, the quoins and the
raised blocks which surround its windows and
form their reveals being vermiculated, while the
heads of the windows are linked by a vermiculated
band and have keystones adorned with benign
bearded heads. In the second storey the windows
are tall, with moulded architraves extending from
the lower cornice to a guilloche band beneath the
upper, and their feet are connected by a pedestal
course which breaks into a balustraded balcony
before each window. The third storey is similarly
treated but, in a curious reversal of established
custom, it receives greater emphasis. The windows, their architraves shouldered and slightly
enriched, are finished with pulvinated friezes and
large segmental pediments, while the balconies
have balusters of a slenderer profile and long
richly moulded brackets which rest on the architraves of the windows below. The attic storey is
defined by the small architrave of the crowning
entablature and here again the windows have
shouldered architraves with slight enrichment, the
spaces between them being filled with raised
panels bearing swags moulded in high relief. The
crowning cornice has multiple supporting brackets
and its moulded face is adorned with a row of
small lion heads.
The feature of the King Street front is the wide
middle bay with its slight projection in the ground
and second storeys. Its ground storey contains the
main entrance, flanking which are pairs of square
Doric half-columns, each pair having in front of it
an attached round-shafted column. All six
columns are rusticated with vermiculated blocks
and upon them rests an entablature forming a base
for the balcony above, its dentilled cornice supported in the centre by an ornate bracket. The
middle bay of the second storey contains a variant
on the Venetian window, with detached Ionic
columns but no sidelights, the place of these being
taken by two panelled pilasters which stretch from
the pedestals of the balcony below to the base of
the one above. The arched head of the main light
is outlined by a moulded archivolt with a cartouche
in its centre and its soffit is richly moulded. The
flanking pilasters have enriched capitals and resting against them are the ornate brackets of the balcony above, each bracket having beneath it a
grotesque head with a pendant of fruit suspended
below it. In the third storey the middle window
is of three lights with a pulvinated frieze and a
cornice above it, the part of the cornice over the
wide centre light being developed as a segmental
pediment with two supporting brackets. In the
attic storey the three-bay arrangement is disregarded, and there are simply five small windows
evenly spaced.
An interesting feature of the St. James's Square
front is the close spacing of the windows, which in
fact corresponds exactly with that of the windows
in the eighteenth-century building formerly on
the site. Since the outer walls of the old building
were unusually thick and the principal internal
walls were in the same positions as those of the
present building it seems clear that Elger and
Kelk's work must have consisted only of heightening and stuccoing the building, and reducing its
depth at the west end.
The interior finishings have been much altered,
probably in the late nineteenth century, but the
back room on the first floor has a plain marble
chimneypiece and a plaster cornice with an
ornamental band on the ceiling, dating from the
first half of the nineteenth century. No eighteenth-century work remains.