Gerrard Place
Gerrard Place was formerly called Nassau Street.
In 1732 the houses to the west of the Earl of
Devonshire's house were demolished and a new
street was formed from Gerrard Street to King
Street. It was called Nassau Street in Whetten's
Buildings, in honour of the forthcoming marriage
of the Princess Royal to 'the Prince of Nassau-Orange'. (ref. 195) The houses in the street were largely
the work of John Whetten, bricklayer, who took
most of the leases of the houses built at this time
and whose name survives on the plaque still in
place on No. 3 Gerrard Street (see page 388).
The street was renamed Gerrard Place in 1910.
Welsh Chapel
Demolished
In 1853 a house on the west side of Nassau
Street, together with a piece of land in the
mews behind, was purchased for a congregation
of Welsh Calvinistic Methodists. (ref. 196) A chapel
to accommodate two hundred persons was built
at the rear in 1855–6 to the designs of R. H.
Moore. (ref. 197) The house in front was let and the
vault beneath the chapel was taken by a hotel-keeper. (ref. 196)
In 1884 the Metropolitan Board of Works
purchased the house in Nassau Street and the
chapel at the rear for the formation of Shaftesbury
Avenue. (ref. 196) In 1887 the congregation moved to a
new chapel in Charing Cross Road (see page 308).
The site of the chapel is now covered by Egmont
House in Shaftesbury Avenue.
No. 2 Gerrard Place
Formerly No. 11 Nassau Street
This house was probably built for Edmund
Byron, an attorney who held mortgages on several
of the houses built by John Whetten. (ref. 198) In
November 1733 John Jeffreys, at Whetten's direction, granted a lease of No. 2 to Byron, (ref. 199) who
occupied the house from 1734 or 1735 until
1775. (ref. 52)
No. 2 Gerrard Place appears to be the surviving house of a uniform group built in the 1730's,
forming the west side of Nassau Street and continuing round into King Street. The front is
three windows wide and four storeys high, the
attic possibly an alteration from an original
mansard garret. The ground storey, with two
windows to the north of the entrance, has been
faced with stucco, the windows being dressed
with stepped architraves and the entrance with a
doorcase composed of Doric antae supporting a
plain frieze, cornice and blocking, all suggestive
of a date about 1850. The upper part of the front
is of yellow and pink stock bricks, the plain
window-openings having stone sills and flat arches
of gauged red brickwork. There is a stucco
bandcourse at first-floor level, and a cornice of
bold profile, in painted stucco or stone, below the
attic storey, both members being returned round
the plain pilaster that forms the south termination
of the front. The attic has been largely rebuilt
after war damage, the windows now having
segmental arches, and a garret storey with two
dormers has been added.
It is evident from the few surviving features
that the interior was finished in a handsome style.
The wide entrance passage is lined with plain
panelling in framing moulded with an ovolo
and an inside fillet, this panelling being finished
with a moulded skirting, a dado-rail of cornice
profile enriched with a key-fret band, and a
dentilled box-cornice. In the middle of the south
side is a segmental-headed recess, framed with a
moulded architrave and containing a seat or shelf
resting on plain consoles. Fluted Doric pilasters
and an elliptical arch dress the opening to the stair
compartment, which is panelled like the entrance
passage. The dog-legged staircase has cut strings,
ornamented with carved bracket step-ends, and the
moulded handrail, beginning with a generous
curtail, rests on plain Doric column-newels and
square-section balusters turned as slender Doric
columns on urn-shaped bases.