No. 33
Architect, Robert Adam, 1770–2. Eastern part of
Charles II Street front by Sir John Soane, 1817–23
(altered). Attic storey and main cornice nineteenth century.
Ground storey refronted in stone, and porticoes, balcony
and garret storey added in 1911 by Messrs. Edmeston and
Gabriel
As at No. 32 very little is known of the history
of the house first built on this site. Like that of
No. 32, the site formed part of the plot granted by
the Earl of St. Albans and Baptist May in March
1669/70 to trustees for Lord Belasyse, and the
house appears with its neighbour in the ratebooks
in 1673. The first occupant was Aubrey,
twentieth and last Earl of Oxford of the de Vere
family. Lord Belasyse himself occupied the house
during the last year of his life, being succeeded by
his son, the second baron, but from 1692 No. 33
was, like No. 32, held for short-term tenancies.
The house stood empty from 1732 until 1734
when it was occupied by John, Lord Hobart,
later first Earl of Buckinghamshire, whose family
inhabited the house intermittently until 1805.
During the three years 1770 to 1772, immediately before the Hon. George Hobart, later
the third Earl of Buckinghamshire, moved into the
house, it was empty. (ref. 619) It was at this time that the
original house, which was still standing in c.
1752, (ref. 620) was demolished and a new house built by
Robert Adam. His plans are in the Soane Museum
(Plates 186a, 186c, 186d, 187a, 188, 189a). (ref. 621) An
elevation of the house is inscribed 'Earl of Buckinghamshire for Mr. Hobart', (ref. 622) which may indicate
that the design was made at the instruction of
George Hobart's half-brother, the second Earl.
Adam's plans and Soane's later survey drawings
show that the house was roughly L-shaped, with
an almost square body, two rooms deep, towards
the square and a short wing, one room deep,
fronting to Charles Street. There were two
rooms in front, almost equal in size, the north
being 'Mr. Hobart's dressing-room', and the south
being the entrance hall where two doors, flanking
a niche, led to the service stairs, against the south
party-wall, and to the 'Great Stair'. This was an
oblong two-storeyed compartment, where the
stairs rose against the west, south and east walls to
stop at the first-floor gallery, which extended
across the north and west sides of the stair hall.
The north gallery was behind a two-storeyed
screen of columns, three bays wide, and the body
of the hall was lit by a large Venetian window in
the east wall. North of the stair hall, on the
ground floor, were two small rooms—a powdercloset and a valet's room—linked with Mr.
Hobart's dressing-room. The wing towards
Charles Street contained a large parlour, which
must have served as an eating-room. On the first
floor (fig. 40), the north gallery landing gave access
to an ante-room serving a drawing-room on the
east and another on the west, each with three windows. South of the west drawing-room was an apseended dressing-room, presumably for Mrs. Hobart.
The two upper floors contained bedrooms, nurseries and staff-rooms.
As rebuilt by Adam, the exterior of No. 33 was
rather plain, both elevations presenting a brick
face containing three tiers of evenly spaced windows, proportionate to the various floors but with
no dressings other than narrow stone sills and flat
arches of gauged brickwork. The St. James's
Square front had four windows in each storey, and
the Charles Street front had seven, two at the west
end being blind. The first-floor level was marked
by a simple pedestal-course, the second-floor level
by a bandcourse—enriched with a guilloche on
the square front only—and the simply moulded
main cornice was surmounted by a plain parapet.
In February 1805 the house, then occupied by
the fourth Earl of Buckinghamshire, was surveyed by John Soane on behalf of a prospective
purchaser, Lord Eliot, for whom Soane was working at Port Eliot in Cornwall. (ref. 623) Lord Buckinghamshire asked for £12,000, but the sale was made
in April 1805 for £11, 100. (ref. 624) In the same
month Soane began extensive work on the house
which was not concluded until February 1807. (fn. a)
Several drawings, dated April 1805, present
Soane's suggestions. (ref. 625) In one scheme, eventually
carried out, the entrance was to be moved from St.
James's Square to Charles Street, with a new entrance hall replacing the powder-closet and valet's
room. Half of the original hall was to form an anteroom serving an enlarged eating-room (formerly
Mr. Hobart's dressing-room). Another proposal
was to divide the original hall and form a waitingroom on its south side. The stairs were to be removed from the stair hall which was to become a
single-storeyed inner hall, and a new principal
staircase was to replace the powder-closet and
valet's room. The documentary evidence of the
work carried out at this time indicates some extension or rebuilding at the back: a 'new room' is referred to, and also the slating of the east end of the
house and of the new building: work on a 'green
house' is also mentioned. Soane made designs for
and views of Lady Eliot's sitting-room. In correspondence he speaks of a 'Round Room' and
'columns on the staircase', and the accounts include payments for oval and square skylights and
for the provision of coloured glass borders and
engraved ground glass in doors and in a fanlight.
The cost was £4355, including Soane's commission at five per cent. (ref. 626)
In 1813 the construction of Waterloo Place
involved Soane in protracted negotiations on Lord
Eliot's behalf with Nash and S. P. Cockerell, the
architect for Lord Eliot's neighbour, the Bishop
of London, over the provision of new stables for
Lord Eliot (as also for the Bishop at No. 32) by
the New Street Commissioners. In July a plan
was settled. (ref. 627) The matter seems to have been
taken up again only in April 1814, perhaps partly
because of some incapacitation for work suffered
by Soane, (ref. 628) and the negotiations lasted until 1817.
April 1815 saw the parties 'quite at Sea' following
some misunderstanding (ref. 629) and by May 1816 the
Earl of St. Germans (as Lord Eliot had become) was finding the negotiations a 'long and
tedious business'. (ref. 630) Nash, however, attributed
the delay to the Earl's own suspiciousness and hard
bargaining, and evidently resented the Earl's apparent unreadiness to recognize that he was dealing
with a gentleman. In October 1816 Nash was
apologizing to Cockerell for delay in building the
Bishop's stables caused by the Earl's reluctance to
make the necessary conveyance of land, and enclosed what purported to be the copy of a characteristically jaunty and disrespectful letter to Soane
in which he rallied him for his failure to extract a
suitable decision from his employer or to show
initiative of his own. (ref. 631) The letter actually sent
to Soane, however, was a little more subdued and
diplomatic in tone than the 'copy' sent to placate
Cockerell. (ref. 632) In the end, new stables were built
for the Earl not at the back of No. 33 as had
originally been intended but north of Charles
Street in Market Lane (now St. Alban's Street)
where the foundations were begun by November
1816 and the building completed, to Soane's design, by May 1818. (ref. 633) In reference to some aspect
of this final arrangement (probably the inclusion
of an extra piece of land, shown on plans of April
1817) Nash wrote to Soane that it was equivalent
to giving the Earl £320 'for making his stables
better then they were to have been. . . . I have no
power to consent or refuse and between ourselves
I am disgusted with the subject.' (ref. 634)
The stables in Market Lane are shown in
drawings in Sir John Soane's Museum; they were
of two storeys and enclosed a courtyard on three
sides with a screen wall to the street. They were
apparently constructed of yellow brick with slight
stone dressings, and the hipped and slated roofs
were partly concealed by a parapet with a simple
brick cornice and stone coping. The ends of the
wings had shallow round-arched recesses containing lunette windows, with rectangular panels
between the stone sills and another band which reappeared as the capping to the screen wall. The
wall was pierced by two round-arched doorways
flanking a gateway with a similar wider opening,
and having above its brick cornice a blockingcourse with each end set forward to support pairs
of typical Soane acroteria. The door and window
openings to the courtyard had semi-circular heads
on the ground storey and segmental heads above
with a continuous sill-band. The side blocks had
round-arched arcades, one containing the stables
and the other two coach-houses with a second
entrance gateway, the shallower rear wing having
a central arched recess and a triple chimney-stack
centrally above it.
An earlier scheme dated May 1816, and not
unlike Soane's stable block at Chelsea Hospital,
had the screen wall at the rear of the courtyard and
a plainer treatment of the ends of the wings with a
triple arcade between them, pierced only by the
entrance gateway with its panelled stone lintel.
Above it was a blocking-course with two pairs of
acroteria, as in the executed design, and also the
triple chimney-stack, brought right to the front of
the building.
By May 1816 the Earl, when writing to Soane
about walls to be built by the New Street Commissioners at the back of No. 33, was suggesting
the adjustment of the work to accommodate a
'proposed addition to my House' fronting on to
Charles Street. (ref. 630) In February 1817 he ordered
Soane to execute part of the intended addition. (ref. 635)
By October the carcase of the new building was
finished but letters and plans relating to the interior were exchanged between Soane and the Earl
until at least the summer of 1819. The work proceeded from early in 1817 until the autumn of
1823, and cost, with Soane's fee, some £7532 in
all. (fn. b) The new work included a domed ceiling,
probably containing the six frames of stained glass
mentioned in the accounts. (ref. 636) Soane also inserted
new sashes in the first-floor windows facing the
square. (ref. 637)
The new building contained two storeys above
a basement, and for the front to Charles Street
Soane produced a typical design, individual in
expression but showing regard for the existing
building. The window openings, the first-floor
pedestal-course, and the second-floor bandcourse
of the Adam front were repeated in a composition
of three bays, one wide between two narrow,
formed by plain brick pilasters, breaking the
pedestal-course but stopping against the upper
bandcourse, above which was a plain parapet and,
over the middle bay, an elaborate chimney-stack.
One design for this shows a group of four square
shafts, closely spaced like pillars to support a plain
lintel from which the pots emerge, and flanked by
panelled stelae, placed over the pilasters and
finished with half-round acroteria. In an alternative design, the parapet is raised above a frieze
ornamented with fret panels, and Soane echoes
Vanbrugh by linking the four shafts, here more
widely spaced, by curtain walls pierced with
doubly recessed arches. The fourth, easternmost,
bay of the front contains a high carriage-archway
leading to the Bishop of London's stables at the
back of No. 32.
Soane's addition provided a large eating-room
on the first floor, reached through an ante-room
adjoining the east drawing-room. This new room
had three tall windows in its south side wall, looking into the court, and none in its north wall, but
both sides had a curious arrangement of clerestory
windows with the light percolating through long
oval openings in the segmental ceiling. There are
two designs for decorating the room, the earlier
one all light and elegance, the later (dated 2 June
1819) plain and sombre. The walls were to be
marbled in shades of brown, the windows draped
in red with swagged pelmets, and the ceiling
patterned with delicate bronzed ribs. (ref. 638)
Further alterations to the building were made
during the course of the nineteenth century,
mostly affecting the back premises. Another staircase, serving all floors, was formed in the court
behind the 'Great Stair', and an elaborate verandah
of florid cast ironwork was erected round the
ground storey to support a first-floor balcony.
Soane's extension lost its chimney-stack when the
whole building was raised to an uniform height,
with an attic storey added above a new and more
prominent main cornice.
In 1910 the house was sold by the Earl of Derby
for £54,000 to the English and Scottish Law Life
Assurance Association, by whom the building was
let as offices. (ref. 639) Internally, it appears to have been
then much as Adam and Soane left it. In 1911, however, Edmeston and Gabriel, of Old Broad Street,
acting for the Assurance Association reconstructed
the basement and ground floor for offices, and
adapted the upper storeys to serve the Caledonian
Club, with a garret storey added in place of the
low-pitched roof. The original staircases were
taken out, walls were removed, and some old back
premises were demolished (fig. 40). The cast-iron
verandah was removed, and the ground storey
received its present facing of stone. A continuous
first-floor balcony and three Ionic porticoes were
added, one of two bays on the St. James's Square
front, and two, each three bays wide, on the
Charles Street front, the design apparently based
on the nineteenth-century portico and balcony
added to Norfolk House (Plate 186b). The central portico in Charles Street served the offices and
that at the east end was the club entrance, opening
to a large hall with the principal and service stairs
at the back. In 1931–2 the house was united with
No. 32 (see page 204). Fortunately, the fine
Adam features in the first-floor rooms have been
preserved. These give the house its present value
and interest.
The west drawing-room and the ovoid
dressing-room are now one. The dressing-room,
small and elegant, retains its apses, one with a window and the other with a doorway, both flanked
by niches. On the south wall is a wood and compo
chimneypiece (Plate 189a, 189b), originally in the
west drawing-room. Its enriched and fluted
architrave is flanked by ram-headed scrolled consoles, supporting a cornice-shelf above a frieze of
diaper pattern, with a central tablet ornamented
with a figure medallion flanked by altars. (ref. 640)
The ceiling (Plate 188a) is of radial pattern,
with a large oval medallion in the centre, surrounded by husk festoons and diagonal pendants,
the latter supporting small circular medallions. (ref. 641)
The west drawing-room is oblong in plan, with
three windows overlooking the square. In the
opposite wall are three doorways, that on each
side original and the middle one replacing the fireplace. All have fine doorcases of Adam design,
almost certainly original. The walls have a
pedestal dado, the face above being formed into
panels by raised fluted mouldings, probably
modern. The frieze, cornice, and very rich
ceiling are certainly original. (ref. 642) The ceiling
(Plate 187) is divided by guilloche bands, stopped
with paterae, into panels, a large square between
two series of small panels—square, oblong, and
square. The latter contain circular or oval
medallions, and the large middle panel is of radial
pattern with a central medallion surrounded by
husk festoons and diagonal pendants, the latter
supporting small circular medallions. In each
corner is a fan motif and between these are lunette
panels adorned with griffins and vases.
The east drawing-room, which is similar in size
and form to the west drawing-room, contains the
third authenticated Adam ceiling (Plates 188b,
189c). (ref. 643) This is of radial pattern, a larger and
more elaborate version of the one in the dressingroom, having a central oval medallion fringed with
anthemion ornament. A larger concentric oval is
formed by a band of paterae which is surrounded
with husk festoons and pendants, the last ending
with shields or ornaments composed of sphinxes
and altars resting on tablets with festoons and pendants below. This room also contains a fine Adam
chimneypiece of white marble, but there is no
related drawing in the Soane Museum.
All of these ceilings are now whitened or
coarsely gilded, but originally they were painted in
Adam's favourite Etruscan colours of pink and
green, with white and gold ornaments, and the
medallions contained figure subjects on grounds of
brilliant blue or red.
Soane's new eating-room is richly decorated in
the Adam manner, with a fine ceiling which must,
however, be regarded as modern. The white
marble chimneypiece is of Adam character
and may well have been moved from another
room.
Nothing of interest appears to have survived on
the ground floor except in the present front
southern room. This was originally part of the
Adam entrance hall, and it retains a simple frieze
of paterae alternating with roundels modelled
with the Hobart 'bull statant'. The chimneypiece is also probably original, with scrolled consoles supporting a cornice-shelf, and a frieze
broken by a tablet bearing a bull's skull in high
relief.