CHAPTER XII
Wardour Street Area: Pulteney Estate
The area shown on fig. 72 was part of an
estate of sixty acres of land in Westminster
which was surrendered by the Abbot and
Convent of Abingdon to Henry VIII in 1536. (ref. 1)
It was then included by the King, with the rest of
St. Giles's Field in which it lay, in the Bailiwick
of St. James, and was held by the Poultney
(later Pulteney) family from 1590 until 1722
under leases granted by Henry VIII and his
successors. (fn. a)
In 1721 an Act of Parliament enabled the
Crown to sell its freehold interest in four parcels
of the former Abingdon lands in Soho, and in
other properties in St. James's parish, to the
trustees of Sir William Pulteney's will. (ref. 2) In
February 1721/2 these four parcels were conveyed to the Pulteney trustees. They comprised
the sites of the modern Nos. 92–100 (even)
Wardour Street; land on the north side of St.
Anne's Court extending as far as the backs of the
houses in Little Chapel (now Sheraton) Street;
the site of the present St. Anne's Buildings on the
south side of St. Anne's Court, and the land between
Meard Street and Bourchier Street (ref. 3) (see fig. 72).
In 1830 the area of the Crown freehold was
further reduced when the freehold of seven small
houses on the south side of Little Chapel Street
and of three adjoining houses in Wardour Street
was conveyed by the Crown to Sir Richard Sutton,
who had inherited the Pulteney estate, in part
exchange for properties in St. James's. (ref. 4) The rest
of the former Abingdon land in Soho has continued
in the Crown's ownership and is now vested in
the Crown Estate Commissioners.
The interest of the Pulteney family in the area
shown on fig. 72 can be traced back to 1590 when
Thomas Poultney acquired a sub-lease under the
Crown of the former Abingdon lands. These then
comprised a number of separate parcels of land,
the majority being in what is now the parish of
St. James, and this one parcel in Soho. The latter
was then a long narrow field of four or five acres
flanking the east side of Colman Hedge Lane
(now Wardour and Whitcomb Streets). (ref. 5) The
field had probably been a medieval enclosure for
tillage, taken out of St. Giles's Field, and on a plan
of 1585 (Plate 1a) is shown enclosed with a hedge
and devoid of all buildings. (ref. 6)
During the succeeding half-century, the Pulteneys sub-let their Soho property to various
tenants and a number of small houses, with sheds,
cowhouses and stables, were erected there, fronting on to Colman Hedge Lane and the Oxford
road. The ground behind these buildings was
converted into gardens and orchards. By 1650,
when this property was surveyed by the Parliamentary Commissioners enquiring into the extent
and value of former Crown lands, there were
found to be about sixty-six separate buildings on
the close. The majority were described as 'Cottages, Cutts, Shedds or meane habitacons' with
mud walls and thatched roofs, though there were a
few more substantially built brick houses, four
of them three storeys high, tile roofed and with
extensive outbuildings. (ref. 7)
The erection of small dwelling houses and
cottages on the close continued in the second half
of the century. By 1664 there were about 103
houses, (ref. 8) some of which had been built on the sites
of former sheds and farm buildings. One such
new building was erected between 1667 and
1669 by John Crafts of St. Martin's, labourer.
Crafts, who later confessed to 'being altogether
illiterate', spent £30 and upwards in building a
house 'in the place and roome of the Leantoo'
adjoining four houses which he owned on the
Pulteney estate in Soho. In return for these
improvements, Crafts received from Sir William
Pulteney a twenty-year extension to his lease, in
December 1669. In 1671, when his title to the
five tenements was challenged, it was claimed
that Crafts had not built a new house but only
'one Roome more to ye Leaneto'. (ref. 9)
To check the erection of poorly built houses
like these, a royal proclamation forbidding unlicensed buildings in 'Wind-Mill Fields, Dog-Fields, and the Fields adjoyning to So-hoe' was
issued in April 1671. (ref. 10) In June John Hatfeild,
who was then engaged in building three small
houses at the upper end of Colman Hedge Lane
on leasehold ground purchased from Luke Dent,
had to obtain the permission of the Privy Council
to continue the work, even though only three
days' more work on the tiling was necessary to
complete the houses. He was allowed to continue
on condition that he observed any directions which
the Surveyor General, (Sir) Christopher Wren,
might give him. (ref. 11)
Figure 72:
The Pulteney estate, plan. Based on the Ordnance Survey, 1869–74
Despite these official sanctions the gradual
development of the Pulteney estate in Soho continued. In about 1680 William Bilson of St.
Pancras, carpenter, built four 'good' new houses on
the north-east side of Soho (i.e., in the upper portion of the modern Wardour Street) at a cost of
£300. They were built on a site formerly occupied by a 'little House' of two rooms and by other
adjoining messuages. (ref. 12)
By the end of the seventeenth century the few
remaining vacant plots were developed and the
orchard and garden ground behind was covered
with a number of small blind alleys and courts,
some of which still remain (e.g., Flaxman Court
and the western portions of St. Anne's Court and
Meard Street). (ref. 13)
In 1694 part of the former arable close, being
in 'a low boggy place', was still waste land. (ref. 8)
There is no sign that Sir William Pulteney, who
had held the Crown lease, adopted any scheme of
systematic re-development for this portion of his
estate. Growth had been haphazard and no
attempt was made to integrate it with the new
streets laid out immediately to the east in Soho
Fields in the 1680's. The estate remained a
separate entity and until as late as 1694 none of
the small courts leading off Wardour Street appears
to have been linked with the other new streets to
the east. (fn. b) This separation ceased when the layout
of Little Chapel Street between Wardour Street
and Great Chapel Street began in 1694; the
western and eastern portions of St. Anne's Court
were certainly linked by c. 1710. (ref. 15) The majority
of the houses were old and the whole Pulteney
property in Soho was valued at only £128 12s.
per annum in 1694. (ref. 8) Some twenty-five years
later the houses in Wardour Street were described by Strype as being 'very ordinary and ill
inhabited'. (ref. 16)
The condition of the estate was gradually improved in the first quarter of the eighteenth
century, notably after the passing of the Act of
1721, when the Pulteneys began granting building leases of large blocks of the property for re-development to individual building tradesmen and
speculators. These included John Meard, carpenter, who built houses in Meard's Court (now
Street) and adjoining properties in Wardour
Street in the early 1720's; (ref. 17) Richard Nicholson,
of St. James's, carpenter, who rebuilt a number
of houses between Little Chapel Street and St.
Anne's Court in the same period; (ref. 18) Allen Hollen
of St. James's, esquire, who laid out a new street
(Hollen Street) in 1715–16; (ref. 19) and Richard Stapler of St. Anne's, coachmaker, who rebuilt houses
in Wardour Street, also in the early 1720's. (ref. 20)
Other building tradesmen involved in these redevelopments included Robert Scott of St.
James's, (ref. 21) Thomas Richmond of St. Giles's, (ref. 22)
William Ludby of St. James's, (ref. 23) Joseph Huddlestone of St. Margaret's (ref. 24) and John Atkinson of
St. James's, (ref. 25) carpenters; William Greenwood of
St. Anne's, (ref. 26) John Curtis of St. Giles's, (ref. 27) John
Brown, citizen of London, (ref. 28) William Barber of
St. Anne's, (ref. 25) and Richard Thornton of St.
James's, (ref. 29) bricklayers; John Evans and Francis
Rayer both of St. Giles's, joiners; (ref. 30) and Jonathan
Thistleton of St. Giles's (ref. 31) and Henry Burdyn of
St. Anne's, (ref. 32) plumbers.
Though the evidence of the ratebooks is inconclusive, major rebuilding on the Pulteney
estate in Soho was probably confined to the second
and third decades of the eighteenth century.
Thereafter there seems to have been little change
until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
Since then most of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses have been demolished,
until today only nine still exist — Nos. 130 and
132 Wardour Street and Nos. 9–21 (odd)
Meard Street. The great majority of the small
individual sites have been amalgamated to allow
for the erection of large shop, office and warehouse
blocks. (ref. 33)
Oxford Street
The portion of the Pulteney estate in Soho which
abuts upon Oxford Street comprises the sites of
the modern Nos. 105–125 (odd). No buildings
are shown on this part of Oxford Street in the
plan of 1585 (Plate 1a) but by 1650 the frontage
to the Oxford road was lined with small houses and
outbuildings, (ref. 7) of which one was probably an inn,
known in 1715 as the Mitre. (ref. 34) Some rebuilding
appears to have taken place here during the first
quarter of the eighteenth century. Allen Hollen
of St. James's, esquire (who also laid out Hollen
Street in 1715–16) and Mark Hooper of St.
Anne's, gentleman, were probably responsible
for these developments. (ref. 35) William Ludby,
carpenter, who built four houses in another part
of the Pulteney estate in Great Pulteney Street in
1719–20, was also involved in some of this work. (ref. 36)
At the same time a small court, known as Allen's
Court, was laid out behind the new houses. (ref. 13)
These buildings probably remained standing until
the late nineteenth century when they were
demolished to make way for the present buildings.
Nos. 105–109 (odd) Oxford Street
This building was erected in 1887–8 (ref. 33) as a
shop and factory for Henry Heath, hatter. The
architects were Messrs. Christopher and White
and the builders Peto Brothers.
The building has a front of tawny-coloured
unglazed terra-cotta, the design being a lively
composition in the early French Renaissance style,
freely treated. A plain modern shop front has
replaced the more elaborate original, and its fascia
now conceals the charming bas-relief frieze
representing the processes of hat-making, modelled
by Benjamin Creswick, a protégé of Ruskin.
Although asymmetrical, the upper part of the
front is balanced about the central feature which
is two bays wide and four storeys high. The
second-floor windows are bowed and those above
are paired in arches, their lunettes decorated with
medallion portraits of George IV and Queen
Victoria. Above the three narrow arched windows
of the fourth floor rises a gable, scroll-sided and
finished with an incurved triangular pediment.
The faces flanking the central feature are both
four windows wide, but pilaster-strips divide the
left face into two equal bays, and the west face
into three bays, the middle one being two windows wide. There are three tiers of windows,
the top tier having arched heads, and over the wide
west bay rises a pedimented dormer gable. Both
the large and small gables are decorated with
finials in the form of beavers, realistically modelled
by Creswick. (ref. 37)
Nos. 111–125 (odd) Oxford Street
This long range of shops and offices was
erected in 1885–8, probably to the designs of
Professor Banister Fletcher, (ref. 38) whose two sons,
(Sir) Banister Flight Fletcher and Herbert
Phillips Fletcher, were associated with him in his
professional practice. (ref. 39) The building has a florid
Renaissance front, built of red brick and stone,
four storeys high and ten bays wide. The shop
fronts and first-floor windows are set within
arches, and bay windows give variety to the third
storey. The arch between Nos. 117 and 121 is
open and forms a passage leading to the court of
Dryden Chambers, a block of U-shaped plan,
four storeys high, which was designed by (Sir)
Banister Flight Fletcher. (ref. 40) This rear building
was not occupied until 1895. (ref. 33) The plain exterior of yellow brick with red dressings is relieved by the paired bay windows projecting
from the east and south ranges, and by the wide
bow ending the north range. The entrances in
the north-east and south-east angles are sheltered
by Ionic porches.
Wardour Street
The boundary of the parishes of St. James and St.
Anne extended along the centre of Wardour
Street and only the eastern side is within the area
included in the present volumes. The western
side was described in Survey of London, volume
XXXI. On the east side all the land between
Oxford Street and Bourchier Street formed part
of the Pulteney estate, and is described in this
chapter. Southwards from Bourchier Street the
east side of Wardour Street was bordered by the
Portland estate, the parish church, churchyard and
glebe land (Chapter X), the Military Ground
(Chapter XVI) and the Leicester estate (Chapters
XVII–XXI). The boundaries of these estates are
shown on fig. 1 on page 21.
Wardour and Whitcomb Streets are marked on
the plan of 1585 (Plate 1a) as a highway leading
from the Uxbridge road (now Oxford Street)
to the Mews (formerly on the site of the National
Gallery). Wardour Street is there called 'Colmanhedge lane', but from the middle of the seventeenth century part of it was called Soho, or Soho
Street. Rocque's map of 1746 (Plate 4) marks the
centre stretch between Meard and Old Compton
Streets as 'Old Soho'. The origin of the name
Soho is discussed on page 25. By the 1680's the
northern part of the street was known as Wardour Street (from Edward Wardour, who owned
land on the west side), and the southern part had
become Princes Street, evidently in honour of
Prince Rupert, after whom the adjoining street
to the west, Rupert Street, had been named. In
1878 the name Wardour Street was extended to
include Princes Street, and the whole length of
Colman Hedge Lane from Coventry Street to
Oxford Street became known by its present name.
Ogilby and Morgan's map (Plate 2) shows that
most of the ground on the east side of the street to
the north of Milk Alley (now Bourchier Street)
had been built upon by 1681–2. The majority of
these seventeenth-century houses seem to have
been rebuilt in the first quarter of the eighteenth
century under building leases from the Pulteney
family. Most of these later buildings probably
remained standing until the second half of the
nineteenth century, by which date many were
occupied by antique dealers, furniture-makers and
brokers, (ref. 41) through whose activities the term
'Wardour Street' came to denote, before the
advent of the film industry, furniture of questionable antiquity.
By 1910 most of the houses had been demolished and their sites amalgamated with others,
to allow for the erection of the large shop, office
and warehouse buildings now lining the east side
of the street.
Nos. 68 and 70 Wardour Street
This building was erected in 1885–6 for a firm
of printers and publishers; (ref. 33) the architect was
A. F. Wells. (ref. 42) The five-storeyed front is an
interesting example of late nineteenth-century
industrial architecture (Plate 135d). The ground
storey has a central entrance flanked by shop
fronts with stallboards of elaborate cast-iron grilles.
The first, second and third floors are treated as a
curtain wall bounded by plain piers of red brick,
each storey containing a range of five small-paned
windows divided by cast-iron mullions, these
extending through the brick aprons. The middle
window in each storey is narrower than the others,
and is emphasized by an arched transom. Above
the simple cornice of brick and stone is an attic
storey of five windows, also divided by cast-iron
mullions.
Nos. 76–88 (even) Wardour Street
This building was erected in 1906–8 (ref. 41) to the
designs of William Woodward, (ref. 43) and is one of
the least meretricious buildings in Wardour
Street, generally a rather tawdry thoroughfare
(Plate 136c). The ground storey consists merely
of a series of shop fronts and doorways, divided
by piers of polished red granite, but the upper face
is designed as a series of twelve tall arches, arranged in groups of three and constructed of
Mansfield stone. Each arch contains three superimposed mullioned-and-transomed windows of
three lights. The arches have boldly moulded
reveals and the stone aprons between the windows
are decorated with sunk panels flanking bosses of
circular or lozenge form. The front is finished
with a boldly profiled cornice, carried round the
curved corner which has three small windows to
each storey and is surmounted by a low dome. The
return front to Meard Street has six arches in its
upper face.
Nos. 130 and 132 Wardour
Street
These two much altered houses were probably
built by 1703. (ref. 13) In February 1731/2 both houses
were leased by William Pulteney to Jacob Blagney of St. Anne's, esquire, for twenty-one years. (ref. 44)
No. 132 now has a mid-Georgian front of the
simplest type, the upper face of stock brick containing two tiers of two windows set in plain
openings with flat arches of gauged red brickwork.
The front of No. 130 was similar but has been
crudely rebuilt.
Nos. 152–160 (even) Wardour
Street
This building (Plate 137) was erected in
1906 by Novello and Company to provide the
publishing side of their business with office
accommodation immediately adjoining the printing and bookbinding works which they had erected
some eight years previously on a large site fronting Hollen Street on the north and Little Chapel
(now Sheraton) Street on the south (Plate 136d).
The architect of both buildings was Frank Loughborough Pearson.
The firm had been founded by Vincent Novello
who in 1811 began publishing music from his
house at No. 240 Oxford Street. In 1829 the
family moved to Soho and Vincent's son, Joseph,
continued to publish music from No. 67 Frith
Street. The family and business moved again in
1834 to No. 69 Dean Street, where they began
in 1847 to print their own publications. Joseph
Novello sold the business in 1866 and in the following year the firm moved to No. 1 Berners
Street, though in 1871 the printing department
returned to No. 69 Dean Street. Subsequently
additional premises were taken in Southwark for
the bookbinding department. In 1898 the printing department in Dean Street and the bindery
in Southwark were both moved to the new works
(referred to above) between Hollen and Little
Chapel Streets. (ref. 45) The firm vacated all the premises in 1965; the publishing office is now at No.
27 Soho Square.
The handsome premises fronting to Wardour
Street have the appearance of a civic building or a
guildhall. In fact, the general design of the
exterior seems clearly to have been modelled on
the German Renaissance Rathaus at Bremen, although the details are derived from Elizabethan
sources. Built in a fine red brick and lavishly
dressed with stone, the front is composed of a
wide and prominent central block flanked by
narrow recessed wings. The ground storey of
the central block is of stone and forms an arcade
of five bays, the simply moulded elliptical arches
dying into plain piers at either end, and resting on
plain-shafted Ionic columns between the bays.
Each arch frames a three-light display window,
having small panes above the transom. The plain
keystones of the arches merge into a bandcourse
which is surmounted by a balustrade, divided by
panelled dies. The slightly recessed upper face of
one lofty storey is of red brick, bounded by flush
quoins of stone in long and short courses. Stone
is also used for the five tall windows, each of them
divided by moulded mullions and a transom into
two tiers of three lights, furnished with smallpaned leaded casements. The windows are
framed with narrow moulded architraves and
finished with low pediments, alternately segmental
and triangular. A rich entablature provides an
effective finish to this stage, the cornice resting on
foliated scroll-consoles rising through the frieze
which is decorated with raised vermiculated panels.
The attic storey is recessed and divided into five
bays by inverted scroll-consoles, rising to support
projections of the narrow cornice-coping.
The south end wing has a ground storey of two
arcaded bays, matching those in the central block,
and the recessed upper face contains two tiers of
two windows, each divided by a mullion and a
transom into four lights. This treatment is repeated in the return frontage to Sheraton Street,
where the ground-storey arcade is of simpler
design in brick with stone mouldings. The slated
roof of this wing is enlivened with a series of
segmental-pedimented dormers. The north end
wing contains the main entrance to the building
and is accorded a more elaborate treatment. The
doorway, flanked by small windows, is recessed
within a porch, divided into three bays by plainshafted Ionic columns. These rest on pedestals
and support an entablature that is returned and
splayed back across the narrow side bays, and
omitted from the arched middle bay, where an
enriched console keystone projects to support a
balustraded balcony of segmental plan, flanked by
half scroll-pediments over the side bays. Above
the porch, and set against a concave face of
channel-jointed stonework, rises a splay-sided bay
window having single lights on either side of the
three-light centre. This bay window is dressed
with fluted Composite pilasters and an enriched
entablature, surmounted by a semi-circular pediment flanked by squat obelisks. The entablature
frieze is carved with foliage scrolls entwined about
the name NOVELLO, and the pediment tympanum
is decorated with a fan-like arrangement of raised
and sunk mouldings. In the recessed face above
the bay are two second-floor windows identical
with those in the south end wing.
The building contains a well-arranged sequence
of interiors, richly decorated in a skilful pastiche of
the Caroline Renaissance style. The entrance
lobby is panelled in plaster to imitate painted
wood, and a rectangular opening, dressed with a
cartouche and flanked by trusses with pendants of
shells, fruits and flowers, leads to the open-well
staircase. This is closely modelled on the stair at
Ashburnham House, Westminster, the principal
storey being dressed with an Ionic order. The
compartmented flat ceiling opens to a circular
lantern, with small-scaled Ionic columns supporting a saucer dome. At the head of the stairs is a
double screen of Ionic columns, three bays wide,
opening to an ante-room decorated in similar
style to the entrance lobby. Until recently, the bay
window of the ante-room contained Roubiliac's
marble statue of Handel, originally in Vauxhall
Gardens and now in the Victoria and Albert
Museum. Beyond the ante-room is the main
hall, five bays long and three bays wide, rising for
the height of two normal storeys. Oak panelling
lines the walls, the bay divisions being marked by
fluted Corinthian pilasters, rising from panelled
pedestals to support a full entablature which is
broken by the eared and scroll-surmounted heads
of the five great windows in the west wall. In
the middle bay of each end wall is a wide segmental-headed doorway, dressed with fluted
Corinthian columns and a segmental pediment,
broken to receive a bust, and in each side bay
projects a glazed bookcase, finished with a
pediment, its cornice rising in concave curves to a
flat top crowned with an urn. The east wall contains the fireplace, furnished with a handsome
marble chimneypiece and an overmantel of carved
oak, set in a recess below a balustraded gallery
that rests on Corinthian columns matching with
those of the doorcases. The walls are finished with
a panelled frieze and a modillioned cornice of
plaster, surrounding a flat ceiling divided by
panelled beams into square compartments that
correspond to the bay spacing of the walls. Two
handsome brass chandeliers with three tiers of
branches are suspended from the ceiling.
Hollen Street
This street was laid out in 1715–16 by Allen
Hollen of St. James's, esquire. The four end
houses at the corner of the new street and Great
Chapel Street were built on the Portland estate
under building leases from the second Duke of
Portland. The two sites on the north side of the
new street were granted to Robert Daniel of St.
Anne's, gentleman, in September 1717 and the
two on the south side to Edmund Stovel of St.
Marylebone, carpenter, in January 1716/17. (ref. 46)
The rest of the street was laid out on part of
the Pulteney estate, some of which, at least, had
been purchased by Allen Hollen in December
1714 from the representatives of Richard Gresham, a deceased wine cooper of St. Paul's, Covent
Garden. The land, formerly a garden, had probably been sub-leased to Gresham by Sir William
Pulteney for a long term in the early 1690's. (ref. 34)
In its early years, Hollen Street was also known
as Gresham Street. (ref. 47)
Building there probably began in 1716,
though all the houses do not seem to have been
completed and occupied until 1724. (ref. 13) John
Curtis of St. Giles's, bricklayer, was responsible
for the erection of the majority of the houses
built on the Pulteney portion of the street. (ref. 48)
The houses built at this time have all been
demolished.
Sheraton Street
Until 1937 this street was called Little Chapel
Street; this name commemorated the Huguenot
chapel which formerly stood on the north side of
the street. The present name commemorates
Thomas Sheraton, the celebrated furnituredesigner, who occupied near-by houses on the
west side of Wardour Street—No. 163 (then
No. 106) from 1793 to 1795, and a house on part
of the site of the present No. 147, from 1798 to
1800. (ref. 49)
Little Chapel Street was laid out in 1694 or
shortly afterwards, probably by John Brome
(Broome), citizen and haberdasher of London.
In June 1694 Brome leased a plot on the north
side of the street to Samuel Mettayer for the
erection of a chapel, (ref. 50)
(fn. c) and in May 1700 John
Poultney granted Brome a seventy-one-year lease
of a large parcel of ground in and adjoining
Little Chapel Street, including the site of the
chapel. (ref. 51) This lease was probably a renewal or
extension of a leasehold interest already held by
Brome.
The chapel attracted Huguenot residents to
the street and as late as 1750 nine out of the fifteen
ratepayers had names of French origin. (ref. 13) In the
mid eighteenth century a number of the inhabitants seem to have been associated with the
decorative arts and crafts and from 1757 to 1766
a house on the north side of the street was occupied
by Peter Charles Canot, a French engraver of
landscapes and seascapes. (ref. 52) In the nineteenth
century many of the inhabitants seem to have been
craftsmen associated with the furniture trade, and
probably worked for the furniture brokers in
Wardour Street. (ref. 41)
No original buildings survive. The northern
side of the street is mainly occupied by the premises formerly used by Novello and Company.
La Petite Patente French
Chapel, Little Chapel Street
Demolished
On 5 September 1688 James II issued letters
patent incorporating a body of ten French
ministers and granting them a licence to establish
one or more churches for the Huguenot refugees
in the City and suburbs. (ref. 53) Two churches, both
known as 'La Patente', were established by the
ministers, one in Spitalfields (ref. 54) and the other in
Berwick Street in the parish of St. James,
Westminster. (ref. 55) In 1694 part of the congregation
of the latter removed to Little Chapel Street in
the parish of St. Anne, and became known as
La Petite or La Nouvelle Patente, while the
remainder of the congregation in Berwick Street
became known as L'Ancienne or La Vieille
Patente. (ref. 55)
On 13 June 1694 John Brome (or Broome),
citizen and haberdasher of London, leased a plot
of land on the north side of Little Chapel Street
to Samuel Mettayer, one of the French ministers,
in trust for the new congregation. The lease,
which was for thirty years, provided that Mettayer
should spend £200 in good and substantial building before 25 December 1694. Lady Eleanour
Hollis (or Holles), 'out of her pious disposicion
and Charity', gave £300 towards the cost of the
chapel, (ref. 50) and a further sum was raised by the
ministers and congregation for the erection of
galleries, pews and a vestry. (ref. 56) The chapel, a
simple rectangular building with the vestry room
behind, was later described as 'ill constructed':
the floor was damp and two steps below the level
of the street. (ref. 57)
At some time before 1726 Brome renewed the
lease of the chapel to Peter Joumard, buttonmaker of St. Martin in the Fields, and Stephen
Anthony Gendron, described as distiller of St.
Anne's and gentleman of Spitalfields, probably in
trust. (ref. 58) In 1784 the congregation merged with
that of Les Grecs-La Savoie, which survived,
latterly as the French Episcopal Church, in
Shaftesbury Avenue, until c. 1925. (ref. 59)
For a period after 1784 the chapel was used
by the Methodists, (ref. 60) but in 1796 a lease of the
building was taken by a part of Dr. John Trotter's
Scots Presbyterian congregation from Swallow
Street. (ref. 61) These dissidents 'separated from Swallow-street in consequence of a dispute between the
Doctor and his assistant, Mr. Thomas Stollerie,
who formed the malcontents into a separate
church upon the independent plan of discipline'. (ref. 60)
By 1822, when the Crown lease to the Pulteney
family expired, the chapel was in a bad state, and
the trustees of the congregation wished to build
a new chapel with a school-room for poor children.
In 1824 the Commissioners of Woods and Forests
granted them a new lease for seventy years, (ref. 57) and
rebuilding was completed by the end of the year. (ref. 13)
The new chapel (Plate 25a) was perhaps
designed either by Samuel Beazley, the theatre
architect, who lived near-by at No. 29 Soho
Square from 1826 to 1851, or by his uncle, Charles
Beazley, who designed the Presbyterian chapel
in Jewin Street in 1808. (ref. 62) In 1838 the congregation applied to the Commissioners of Woods and
Forests for a reduction of rent, and this request was
supported by Samuel Beazley. The petitioners
stated that they had spent over £4,000 on the new
chapel, and that in their efforts to 'ameliorate the
wretchedness social and moral abounding in the
Neighbourhood', they had provided a Sunday
school for 150 poor children whose parents could
not afford day schools. They had accommodation
for a day school which they hoped to run on
'comprehensive principles', but were too poor to
establish the school. (ref. 63) The result of the application is not known.
The Presbyterians continued to use the chapel,
which by 1850 had become known as the Wardour
Chapel, until 1889, when it was taken over by the
Wesleyan West Central London Mission. The
Wesleyans remained until about 1894, when the
building was demolished to make way for Novello's printing works. (ref. 64)
The chapel had a simple and dignified front of
brick, dressed with stone or cement. It was two
storeys high and five windows wide, the middle
three contained in a projecting face. In the
ground storey were three segmental-headed windows, with moulded architraves, placed between
and flanking the two doorways, each finished
with a moulded architrave, plain frieze, and a
cornice resting on consoles. A plain bandcourse
underlined the first-floor windows, their tall
round-headed openings framed with unbroken
moulded architraves. The front was finished
with a simply moulded entablature, and a triangular pediment with a brick tympanum surmounted
the central feature.
St. Anne's Court: western range
The eastern portion of St. Anne's Court, built
in Soho Fields, was in existence, as a court off
Dean Street, in c. 1690 when it already bore its
present name; (ref. 65) it is described on page 142.
The western portion was built on the Pulteney
estate, probably at about the same time, as a small
court leading out of Wardour Street. The two
portions were perhaps unconnected in 1694, (ref. 8)
but had been joined by c. 1710. (ref. 15) The twist in
the middle of the court is a relic of this uncoordinated development and marks what was once
the boundary between the two estates.
Strype described St. Anne's Court in 1720 as
'pretty well built and inhabited, with a Freestone
Pavement' (ref. 66) and even as late as the mid nineteenth
century The Builder considered that 'This court
and place are not what may be considered
dilapidated'. The drainage was, however, very
defective, and an outbreak of cholera occurred
here in September 1854. (ref. 67) It was probably as a
consequence of this epidemic that four old houses
on the south side of the court were demolished
in 1863–4 to be replaced by a block of 'model
lodging Houses' known as St. Anne's Buildings
and still existing. At the end of the century St.
Anne's Court was described as being 'crowded
with Jews'. (ref. 68)
St. Anne's Buildings
This block of artisans' dwellings was erected in
1864–5 to the designs of William Burges (ref. 69) on
ground leased from the Sutton estate to L. M.
Rate. (ref. 70) Originally there was a school-room on the
ground floor.
Although Charles Eastlake, writing in 1872, (ref. 69)
admired the design, Burges's small range of model
dwellings now seems as grim-visaged as any building of its type and period, altogether lacking the
touch of romantic fantasy that generally enlivens
his domestic work (Plate 117d). The fourstoreyed front is of yellow stock bricks, with boldly
projecting courses forming imposts and sill-bands
for the windows. These are set, with tympana of
herring-bone brickwork, in wide pointed arches
of gauged brick forming red and yellow voussoirs
alternately. At the east end of the front are five
closely spaced windows, and at the west end are
three set at wide intervals. In the fourth storey
the windows have straight arches of brick on
stone kneelers. A parapet projecting on a corbelling of diagonally laid bricks finishes the front.
Meard Street
The western portion of this street was built on the
Pulteney estate, but its development is described
in the chapter on the Pitt estate (page 238), upon
which the eastern portion of the street was built.
Bourchier Street
The western part of this street, formerly known
for many years as Milk Alley and from 1838 to
1937 as Little Dean Street, formed the boundary
between the Pulteney estate on the north and
Soho Fields on the south. The street is described
on pages 141–2.