No. 105 Pall Mall: The Hon. Thomas Fitzmaurice's House
Occupied part of the site of the Reform Club
The ratebooks show that one of the houses
(later No. 105 Pall Mall) which stood on the site
of the Reform Club was occupied in 1779 and
from 1781 to 1787 by the Hon. Thomas Fitzmaurice, a friend of Johnson and Garrick, and
brother of the first Marquis of Lansdowne. (ref. 35) The
house was empty in 1778 and again in 1780; in
1779, when Fitzmaurice's name first appears in
the ratebooks, the rateable value of the house was
raised from £150 to £250. This suggests that
the house was altered or rebuilt.
In volume 11 of James Paine's Plans, Elevations
and Sections of Noblemen and Gentlemen's Houses,
published in 1783, there are engravings of four
plans and the front elevation of 'the Honble Thos.
Fitzmaurice's House, Pall Mall' (Plate 223). The
plans show that the house consisted of two blocks
of building, linked at basement level and by a large
bow-fronted room at ground-floor level, looking
on to an internal court. An examination of the
plans will show that the north block, fronting Pall
Mall, is a rectangular building with projecting
closet wings against the east and west party-walls.
The interior is planned in a straightforward
utilitarian fashion with simple rectangular rooms,
typical of an early eighteenth-century builder's
house and quite unlike Paine's work. The southern block and the link, however, have bow-ended
rooms and all the Adamesque subtleties of planning that Paine employed in his later buildings.
In fact it is clear that Paine adapted an existing
house, probably remodelling the principal staircase
and redecorating the rooms, and built a sumptuous
annexe at the back containing a noble crossvaulted kitchen with two splendid bow-ended
rooms on the floors above. The Pall Mall front,
with its four tiers of segmental-headed windows,
is in outline typical of the early eighteenth century.
Paine laced it over in the Adam manner, probably
using Liardet's stone-paste (an Adam sideline)
since he stated that 'the architectural ornaments
were adapted by the author to the original front at
the time the foregoing additions were made, and
were executed by Messrs. Adams'. (ref. 36) The groundstorey windows and doorway were set in a rusticated arcade, sustaining an enriched Ionic order
with plain-shafted pilasters embracing the second
and third storeys, and the fourth storey was treated
as a pilastered attic with a secondary entablature
crowned by vases.
According to Paine's elevation this front scales
36 feet in width, but his plans show a building
width of only 33 feet, which is virtually the same
as the frontage of No. 105 (33 feet 2 inches) as
given by Zachary Chambers on his survey plan of
1769. (ref. 37) The fact that Coney, in his panoramic
view of 1814 (pocket, drawing B), shows an entirely different front at No. 105 (described below)
suggests that, despite Paine's refurbishing, the
front block of the house was demolished and rebuilt
before that date. The very substantial south
block, however, probably survived, for its bowfronted south wall corresponds very closely with
the southern building line of No. 105 as shown on
a survey plan, accompanying a report dated 15
October 1831, by Chawner and Rhodes, relating
to the houses then existing on the Reform Club
site. (ref. 38)
Coney shows a house of, probably, early nineteenth-century date, with a front of four storeys,
three windows wide. The rusticated ground
storey contained an arched doorway between
arch-headed windows; the tall first-floor windows
opened on to a continued iron balcony; and a
framed tablet with patera-stops underlined the
second-floor windows. The front was finished
with a simple entablature and a triangular pediment.
Between 1789 and 1796 the house was occupied by Mrs. Fitzherbert; she was succeeded in
turn by the Globe Insurance Company and Sir
Walter Stirling. Between 1826 and 1834 George
IV used the house as an annexe to Carlton
House. (ref. 34) In the latter year the National Gallery
of Pictures was removed to No. 105 from No. 100
Pall Mall; the collection remained there until the
completion of the new National Gallery building
in Trafalgar Square in 1838. (ref. 39) No. 105 Pall Mall
was demolished in the same year for the Reform
Club.