No. 2 Soho Square
This was one of the houses whose ground rent
was sold by Richard Frith and William Pym in
September 1679 to the executors of Joseph Girle (ref. 40)
(see page 31). The completion of the half-finished
building was the work of Philip Harman, citizen
and draper, one of Girle's sons-in-law and executors, upon whom the administration of Girle's
complicated personal estate devolved. He had the
house plastered and partly wainscoted and the
doors, windows, bolts and locks put in. The
kitchen was fitted up with dressers, shelves, two
iron ranges, two coppers and two leaden cisterns
(second hand) with brass cocks and washers. The
New River water was laid on to the house, the
garden was put in order and 'Pallysadoe Pales'
erected along the street front, while behind the
house, a coach-house and stables were built in
Dean Street. (ref. 41)
(fn. a)
When finished the house stood empty for some
time and in order to attract tenants Harman was
forced to go to the expense of furnishing it. Even
so, his tenants seldom remained long and the house
was often empty. The first known tenant was
Thomas Frankland who was living here in
1691. (ref. 42) Other inhabitants included Colonel
Byarly, 1696; Lady Jolly, 1697 and possibly later;
and Sir Gilbert Pickering, third baronet, 1718–1726. (ref. 33)
The house was rebuilt in 1735 by John Sanger
of St. James's, carpenter, who was then also
rebuilding the two houses adjoining to the south,
Nos. 1 and 38. In August 1734 Sanger was
granted a sixty-five-year lease of the site by
Elizabeth, Duchess of Portland, (ref. 43) and in January
1736/7 he assigned it to Arthur Champernowne
of Dartington, Devonshire, esquire, (ref. 44) who
occupied it until 1742. In 1744 Sir John
Phillips was living here, evidently as Champernowne's tenant; he was possibly the sixth baronet,
of Picton Castle, Pembrokeshire, a Tory M.P.
and Jacobite. Champernowne was back in 1747,
and the house was retained, though never again
occupied, by the Champernowne family until at
least 1781. From 1748 to 1771 it was let furnished to the London envoy of the Venetian
Republic at a rent of £160 per annum; (ref. 45) the
Venetian envoy had previously lived at No. 31
and subsequently moved to No. 12. Later
occupants include Lieutenant-General Henry
Trelawny, 1781–1800; John Harrison Curtis,
aurist, 1818–46, and William Harvey, aurist,
1847–75. (ref. 33)
Figure 8:
No. 2. Soho Square, doorcase
The house which Sanger erected still stands,
and its original character is perceptible despite
considerable alteration (Plate 93d). The plain
front, of yellow stock brick with square-headed
openings, is three windows wide and four
storeys high, the top one being an addition.
A sill-band, at first-floor level, has been cut
through and there is a shop window on the
ground floor where, however, a pedimented
wooden doorcase survives with engaged Doric
columns flanking a round-arched opening. Both
the front itself and certainly the doorcase (fig. 8)
appear to date from rather later in the eighteenth
century but the general lines agree with Sanger's
third house, the surviving No. 38 Soho Square,
and also formerly, it seems, with the now demolished No. 1.
The plan provides a front room beside the entrance hall, a top-lit staircase in the centre and a
large room across the rear with a projecting
closet beyond. On the first floor are two large
rooms with the staircase between them; a number of rooms are now partitioned. The original
joinery of the house was of a high standard and,
although no decorated ceilings survive, there are
still enriched plaster cornices in three of the four
main rooms. The first-floor rear room is the most
altered of these but the other three retain their
wide and narrow wooden panelling with carved
mouldings and ovolo door architraves. No original
chimneypieces survive but a pair of carved
flanking scrolls have been left in the rear room on
the ground floor and on each side of them are
large semi-circular niches with finely carved
shell-heads (Plates 98b, 128d). The entrance
hall and second-floor rooms are well finished in a
plainer manner, the former having a pair of corniced doorcases. The staircase is formed round an
open well with rectangular ends to the steps, two
turned balusters per tread, plain column-newels
and a heavy swept handrail ending in a big curtail.
The staircase has been renewed above first-floor
level.