Nos. 31–32 Soho Square: Twentieth Century House
Twentieth Century House was erected in
1936–7 from the designs of the architect Gordon
Jeeves (ref. 292) for the Twentieth Century-Fox Film
Company. The elevations are of red brick and
artificial stone in the Neo-Georgian manner.
There are five storeys and another lit by dormers
in the roof (Plate 71c).
Figure 29:
No. 31 Soho Square, plan in 1690: No. 32 Soho Square, plan in 1913
Twentieth Century House occupies the site of
three old houses, Nos. 31 and 32 Soho Square
and No. 67 Frith Street. Both the first and last
of these houses had originally formed part of a
large corner mansion built between 1677 and
1680 which also extended over the adjoining site
of the present No. 65–66 Frith Street. The
former No. 32 Soho Square had a separate history
(see below).
No. 31
This site had a frontage of 48 feet to Soho
Square and about 110 feet to Frith Street. In
June 1680 Richard Frith and William Pym
leased the 'great messuage' there to Cadogan
Thomas of Lambeth, timber merchant, for fortynine years at a ground rent of £20 per annum with
an additional rent of ten shillings a year for the
upkeep of the garden, rails and fountain in the
centre of the square. The house may still have
been unfinished, but in this instance the lease
granted to Thomas did not include the usual
peppercorn rent for the first year. (ref. 293)
The ground plan of this house (fig. 29) drawn
on a conveyance of the property in 1690 (ref. 1) , shows
it to have been built with two ranges of rooms
extending from north to south, parallel with
Frith Street, the back range broken in the centre
by a large area open to the garden on the west.
The rooms were arranged in two groups, separated
by a pair of closets, suggesting that the building
was planned for an easy conversion into two
houses. On the ground storey, the southern part
contained a front hall, a front room with a closet
adjoining, and a large back room on the north side
of the dog-legged staircase. The back range of the
northern part contained a square hall entered from
Soho Square and leading to a spacious open-well
staircase, and in the front range were two large
rooms, separated by a closet and a service stair.
As the parish ratebooks for most of the 1680's
are missing it has been impossible to discover
when the house was first occupied, but in June
1690 the creditors of Benjamin Hinton, to whom
Cadogan Thomas had mortgaged the property in
September 1680, assigned the lease to Paulet St.
John, third Earl of Bolingbroke, for £1,800.
Lord Bolingbroke lived here until 1705, when he
sold the house to Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell
for the sum of £2,257, which probably indicates
that he had embellished the house during his
period of residence. (ref. 1)
Sir Clowdisley Shovell retained the house until
his death in 1707. His widow then divided it into
two separate dwellings, both still of considerable
size. The northern half of Frith's original mansion later became known as No. 31 Soho Square
and, though subsequently much altered, it
survived until its demolition in 1936; the
southern half in Frith Street had a similar though
separate history. The two parts of the one old
house were occupied separately and intermittently
by Lady Shovell until her death in 1732, by her
daughter Elizabeth and the latter's first and second
husbands, the Lords Romney and Hyndford.
From about 1744 to 1747 one or both parts of
the original mansion was occupied by the Venetian envoy, and part of the curtilage, which extended back to Dean Street, was fitted up as a
Roman Catholic chapel for his use (see page 131).
A later occupant of the house fronting Soho
Square (No. 31) was the portrait painter, Allan
Ramsay, who lived here from 1761 to 1767.
Part of the house in Frith Street was occupied
from 1770 to 1772 by another artist, Johann
Zoffany. (ref. 33)
The ratebooks indicate that between 1768 and
1778 both parts of the original old building were
partially rebuilt and improved. During this time
the portion fronting Frith Street, still a building
of considerable size, was further subdivided into
three, to provide one large house to the north
(No. 67 Frith Street, demolished together with
No. 31 Soho Square in 1936 for the erection of
Twentieth Century House) and two smaller
houses to the south (now demolished, on the site
of the present No. 65–66 Frith Street). (ref. 33)
A comparison of the view of the house shown
in the aquatint of the west side of the square in
about 1816 (Frontispiece) and in Tallis's view of
1838–40 (fig. 6) shows that the rusticated ground
storey and the stucco embellishments of the
windows, seen on Plates 70b and 95b, were later
additions. The elegant porch of Ionic columns,
plain shafted, supporting an open pedimenthood, was presumably added when the house was
altered in the 1770's.
A drawing by Hanslip Fletcher (Plate 96a)
shows one of the principal rooms, with its walls
panelled in two heights, the chair-rail, panel
mouldings, and dentilled cornice being enriched
with carving. The fine Palladian chimneypiece,
possibly an importation, had tapered jambs carved
with floral pendants below the scrolled trusses
supporting the frieze, which was carved with
floral festoons flanking an Aurora-head tablet,
and the dentilled cornice-shelf.
No. 32
This site has now lost its separate identity and
since 1936–7 has formed part of that of Twentieth
Century House (Nos. 31–32 Soho Square).
By June 1680 Richard Frith and William Pym
had leased this house, the southernmost on the
west side of the square, to Thomas Pitcher, (ref. 3)
citizen and fishmonger, (ref. 294) probably identifiable
with Thomas Pitcher of Deptford who supplied
Frith with tiles. (ref. 295) The house was then probably
only partly finished, and its first known occupant
was Thomas Mansell, who moved here from
Gerrard Street in 1691–2. Mansell was the head
of a prominent family in South Wales. He was
an active Tory politician and was created Baron
Mansell of Margam in 1711/12. In 1719 he
handed over the house in Soho Square to his
eldest son Robert, who in the previous year had
married a daughter of Lady Shovell, their
neighbour at No. 31. After Robert's death in
1723, the house was occupied by his brother
Bussy (later fourth Baron Mansell) until 1729. (ref. 38)
The succeeding tenant of No. 32 in 1730–1
was the Duke of Ripperda, a Dutch adventurer
who, after rising to become chief minister to the
King of Spain, fled to England in disgrace in
1728. At first he is said to have lived unostentatiously in London but feeling more secure moved
to 'a fine house in Soho-Square which he furnish'd
very handsomely'. In 1731 he left the country
and finally settled in Morocco. There he became
a Mohammedan, rose to a command in the
Moorish army and died at Tetuan in 1737. (ref. 296)
A later occupant was John Cleland, possibly
the author of Fanny Hill, who lived at No. 32 in
1771–2. (ref. 33)
After standing empty for two years, the house
was rebuilt for Sir George Colebrooke, a city
banker, between 1773 and 1775. The architect
is unknown but may have been Sir Robert
Taylor, who worked for Colebrooke at Arnos
Grove in Middlesex at some time before 1777. (ref. 297)
During these years, Sir George Colebrooke's
bank in Threadneedle Street was in difficulties. (ref. 298)
The erection of this new house in Soho Square
and the decoration of its fine interior no doubt
increased his financial embarrassments and in
1776 or 1777 he sold No. 32 to (Sir) Joseph
Banks. (ref. 33)
Architectural Description
No. 32 Soho Square was a large L-shaped house
with a deceptively narrow frontage of eighteen
feet to the west side of the square, the building
extending thirty-three feet southwards against the
side of No. 31 on the south side (fig. 29). (fn. a) An
east-west wall divided the building into a northern
and a southern range, respectively fifty-six and
thirty-one feet in depth. The plan was arranged
on simple lines, and the absence of variously shaped
rooms makes it seem unlikely that the Adams were
concerned with the building, as has been suggested
by several writers. The front door opened directly
to a large oblong hall in the front part of the
northern range. Doors in the west wall of this hall
gave access to the principal and service staircases
and the two rooms beyond, one a dining-room with
three windows looking south into a garden court,
the other an ante-room or study with two windows
in its west wall. There were two rooms in the
south range, the narrow and ill-lit east one probably
serving as a porter's room, the west one having a
screened recess on its east side and two windows
looking west into the court. The principal staircase was top-lit through a domed skylight, and the
stairs ascended against the east, north and west
walls to arrive at an L-shaped landing on the
first floor, with doors opening south to the large
drawing-room, east to the smaller drawing-room
overlooking the square, north to the service staircase, and west to a bedchamber and dressing-room.
The front was an arresting composition with an
ingenious arrangement of three-light windows.
In the stucco-faced ground storey was a wide
opening with plain piers supporting a semi-elliptical arch, formed with flush and slightly projecting voussoirs alternately. Within the arch
was a three-bay screen of columns and antae,
having plain shafts and Tower-of-the-Winds
capitals, supporting a guilloche-banded transom.
The wide middle bay contained the six-panelled
door of two leaves, in each side bay was a small
sash window, and in the tympanum was a radial
fanlight of three concentric rings. The upper face
was constructed as a wide and lofty arch of plain
brickwork, with an enriched impost of stone or
stucco. Inside this arch was an elaborate screen
of woodwork, framing two windows of three
lights, wide between narrow. The lower window
had lights of equal height divided by columns and
antae of an Ionic order, the plain and attenuated
shafts rising from tall pedestals, originally flanking
panelled aprons, and the capitals having leaf
ornamentation above the necking. The entablature of this window consisted of a plain frieze
and a delicately detailed modillioned cornice.
The Venetian window above had more normally
proportioned columns of a Composite order,
also placed on tall pedestals projecting between
apron panels enriched with palm branches and
wreathed paterae. The entablature over the
side-lights had a frieze enrichment of fluting
between paterae, and was continued to form the
impost of the brick enclosing arch. The middle
light of the window was arched, its moulded
archivolt being concentric with the enclosing
arch. The late Arthur Bolton conjectured that
this front was originally finished with a cornice
just above the brick arch, but at some time the wall
had been heightened to allow for an attic storey
half-window, which was supplemented later by
another half-window cut into the fan-shaped
tympanum of brick above the Venetian window.
From the evidence of measured drawings and
photographs of the interior, (ref. 299) it would seem that
Bolton was mistaken in attributing the work to
the Adams. On the contrary, the decorative work
strongly supports the attribution to Sir Robert
Taylor, suggested above in the historical account
of the building. The hall was quite simply decorated, the plastered walls having large panels within
laurel-banded frames, arranged above the plain
dado. The doorcases were composed of moulded
architraves surmounted by fluted friezes and
mutuled cornices; the elliptically arched screen
containing the front door was dressed with a plain
Doric order; and the fireplace centred in the
south wall had a chimneypiece with Ionic plainshafted columns supporting a plain entablature.
A mutuled cornice surrounded the plain ceiling.
In the south back room the chief feature was the
screen to the recess, the columns and antae
having fluted shafts and fanciful Corinthian
capitals. A narrow frieze, enriched with urns
between paterae, and a simple cornice surrounded
the plain ceiling. The cornice decoration was
repeated in the frieze of the wood and compo
chimneypiece, where it was broken by a central
tablet having a wreathed vase between festoons,
below an enriched cornice-shelf. In his article
in Country Life, Arthur Bolton mentions the
glass domed light above the well of the principal
staircase, the latter being constructed of stone,
and he notes a wood chimneypiece in the groundfloor back room, having a fluted frieze with a
central medallion and swag. In the same article,
the front drawing-room (Plate 97a) is described as
having a ceiling 'cleverly set out with a radiating
centre-piece in low relief plaster-work'. (ref. 300) Photographs (ref. 301) show that the walls had a plain dado
with an enriched chair-rail, the upper face being
finished with a delicate cornice above a narrow
frieze composed of paterae set in a guilloche of
interlacing ribbons. The ceiling had a radial
arrangement of husk and flower pendants, linked
by husk-festoons and set in a large circular frame
within a square, this being flanked north and
south by three narrow oblong panels of arabesque
ornament. The east wall contained the large
three-light window overlooking the square, the
shutter casings being faced with attenuated
pilasters having fluted shafts and enriched Ionic
capitals. The chimney-breast centred in the
south wall was flanked by shallow recesses
containing arch-headed cupboards, each having a
plain door in the dado, below a mirrored door
and a cobweb fanlight, the latter framed by a
moulded archivolt rising from an enriched impost
resting on fluted Ionic pilasters. The white
marble chimneypiece (Plate 129b), now in the
Royal Society's apartments at Burlington House,
has narrow pilasters with fluted shafts and acanthus-leaf capitals, supporting a frieze decorated
with fluting between patera-stops and a central
tablet carved with a festooned tazza. The corniceshelf is enriched with egg-and-dart ornament
below the corona.
The finest and best recorded room was the
great south drawing-room (Plate 97b). This
lofty apartment had two tall arch-headed windows
in its west wall, and central in the south wall was
a splendid chimneypiece of inlaid marble, a
classical composition with fluted Ionic columns
supporting an entablature, its architrave fluted and
its frieze decorated with inlaid marble fluting,
flanked by stops with oval paterae and broken
centrally by a framed tablet of green and white
Wedgwood jasper ware (Plate 129a). (fn. b) The walls
were plain but for an enriched dado-rail and a
plaster entablature, composed of a frieze of
pedestal-urns between anthemion ornaments, and
an enriched cornice. The ceiling was a shallow
saucer dome of oval plan, resting on pendentives
rising from the entablature and forming a segmental tympanum on each wall (Plate 131c).
These elements were enriched with low-relief
plasterwork, each tympanum containing a
wreathed circular panel flanked by putti, their
bodies emerging from spreading tails of acanthus
scroll-work. Vine-wreathed bosses were placed
in the sunk panels of the pendentives, which were
framed, like the oval saucer dome, with guilloche
bands. Crescent-shapes, decorated with interlacing laurel branches, effected a transition from
the oval frame to a circular panel containing two
concentric rings of fan ornament with enriched
borders.
Later History
No. 32 was bought from Sir George Colebrooke
by (Sir) Joseph Banks in 1776 or 1777. Although
still only a young man, Banks had already won a
great reputation as a naturalist and traveller
through his voyage to the South Sea Islands and the
Antipodes with Captain Cook in 1768–71.
On his return he lived for some years in New
Burlington Street and moved to Soho Square in
August 1777, where the house became the
centre of his ceaseless scientific activities. It
was here that he held his philosophical breakfasts
or 'literary Saturnalia' which were frequented
by the intellectual society of London. (ref. 302) These
gatherings were not always so distinguished, for in
March 1791 Horace Walpole related that at one
of these occasions a Parisian watchmaker had
'produced the smallest automaton that I suppose
was ever created [a singing bird springing out of a
snuff box] … That economist, the Prince of
Wales, could not resist it, and has bought one'. (ref. 303)
When (Sir) Charles Bell, later resident at No. 34,
breakfasted there in 1804 he found that his host
'has a set of most absurd animals about him
—living animals—German and French toadeaters'. (ref. 304)
Every year Banks and his wife and sister
'departed [from Soho Square] . . . with the punctuality of migrating birds' for his Lincolnshire
estates or to the family's suburban house at Heston
in Middlesex. (ref. 305) His great library and natural
history collections remained permanently housed
in the back premises of No. 32 Soho Square overlooking Dean Street, and it was probably the
ample accommodation provided for these that
made Banks retain the house long after the fashionable world had deserted Soho Square for newer
houses in Mayfair and beyond. He evidently
disdained both fashion and modern comforts, for
the contemporary diarist and traveller, John
Byng, after condemning Revesby, Banks's Lincolnshire seat, as mean, uncomfortable and dismal,
added 'but when a man sets himself up for a wild
eccentric character and (having a great estate
with the comforts of England at command) can
voyage to Otaheite [Tahiti] and can reside in a
corner house in Soho-Square, of course his
country seat will be a filthy and neglected spot'. (ref. 306)
The domestic peace which Banks enjoyed in
Soho Square was rudely shattered in March 1815
when an attack was made on his house by rioters
demonstrating against the Corn Bill then before
Parliament designed to protect the landed interest
against the importation of cheap foreign corn. (ref. 307)
Banks described to a correspondent how 'the
windows and doors of my house and the hall-table
and chairs was all they destroyed. They dared not
enter the house as those inside must have been
caught, when the soldiers came, and hanged them
as burglars. The papers they threw about were old
letters of no possible value, but of these the
greater part have been picked up and returned to
me. Nothing could behave better and few persons
so nobly as Lady B and my Sister. They sat by
me without any expression of extravagant fear
till the door was burst open. I then requested
them to retire which they did but not out of the
house'. (ref. 308)
There is no indication that Sir Joseph Banks
carried out any extensive redecoration of No. 32
after buying it from Sir George Colebrooke.
Some surviving accounts for his household in
Soho Square for the years 1785 to 1790, now in the
Sutro Library, San Francisco, contain a number
of references to money paid to various building
tradesmen for repairs to the house. Their bills
for the year 1785 were larger than usual and
may be for work on Banks's library buildings at
the back of No. 32. The tradesmen employed on
this and other work during these years include
George Grundy, bricklayer, George Soward and
Sons, masons, Thomas Allen and William Bond,
plumbers, Richard Can, glazier, Francis Danby
and Alexander Redford, carpenters, Edward
Webb, blacksmith, W. and J. Rothwell, plasterers,
and William Lewen, painter. (ref. 309)
Sir Joseph Banks died at his house at Heston in
June 1820, (ref. 60) leaving to his 'indefatigable and
intelligent Librarian Robert Brown Esquire . . .
the use and enjoyment during his life of my
Library Herberium, Manuscripts, Drawings,
Copper plates, Engravings and everything else
that is contained in my Collections usually kept in
the back buildings of my house in Kings otherwise Soho Square and fronting on Dean Street …
upon this express Condition that he continues to
use my Library as his Chief Place of Study in
the same manner as he now does and that he
assists the Superintendent of the Royal Botanic
Gardens at Kew as he also now does and continues
to reside in London and does not undertake any
new charge that may occupy his time'. On
Brown's death these collections were to pass to
the British Museum. There was, however,
another provision in the will allowing Brown to
surrender the collection to the Museum in his
lifetime (as he later did). Brown was also left
the reversion of the lease and contents of the house
in Soho Square after Lady Banks's death, and
Sir Joseph added that 'it is my will that so long as
my said wife shall continue to inhabit the said
house she shall supply the said Robert Brown with
firing, candles, cleansing, attendance of Servants
and such other easements as the Library now
receives from the other part of the house'. (ref. 310)
Lady Banks died shortly after her husband,
and the lease of No. 32 Soho Square passed to
Brown, who had been the librarian and curator
there since 1810. He retained the back portion
of the house, which fronted on to Dean Street
and contained the library, museum and his own
living quarters, until his death in 1858, but in
1827 he presented Banks's books and specimens
to the British Museum. (ref. 311) In 1822 he leased
the main portion of the house fronting on to Soho
Square to the Linnean Society at a rent of £140
per annum. (ref. 312)
The first meeting of the Linnean Society at
No. 32 Soho Square took place on 24 May 1821
and £130 was spent on alterations and new
furniture. This sum included £69 paid to John
Pryer, carpenter, £58 to Messrs. Pryer and Mackenzie, upholsterers, and £2 to Messrs. I. and G.
Trollope, paper-hangers. On Pryer's bill there is
an item of £26 9s. 8d. for 'Taking down closets,
taking old seats to pieces, glueing up do. to make
shelves'. (ref. 313)
In 1851 Robert Brown's lease of the building
expired. The Linnean Society, which still occupied the front portion of the house, took a headlease directly from the freeholder for a further
twenty-one years and sub-let the back buildings
to Brown. These rooms now comprised a dwelling house, private museum, outbuildings and yard,
numbered No. 17 Dean Street. (ref. 314)
After the Government had purchased Burlington House in October 1854 the Linnean
Society was offered accommodation there and
the house in Soho Square was vacated in 1857. (ref. 315)
The Dental Hospital of London was here from
1860 to 1873, when it removed to Nos. 40–41
Leicester Square. It was succeeded by the newly
founded hospital subsequently known as the
National Hospital for Diseases of the Heart and
Paralysis, which occupied No. 32 from 1874
until 1913, when it moved to a new building in
Westmorland Street, St. Marylebone. (ref. 316)
From 1915 to 1937 the house was occupied by
Thornton-Smith Limited, antique furniture
dealers and interior decorators, but it was demolished in the latter year to make way for
Twentieth Century House. The Royal Society
acquired one chimneypiece for its association with
Banks, who had been President of the Society, and
installed it in the Society's rooms at Burlington
House. (ref. 317) The Royal Institution of Great
Britain, whose first meeting had been held under
Banks's chairmanship at No. 32 Soho Square in
1799, acquired the chimneypiece from the south
drawing-room and installed it in the Institution's
premises in Albemarle Street. (ref. 318)