Architects and Builders
The names of some 290 individuals who were connected
with the building trade, either as practitioners of its arts
and crafts or as suppliers of materials, are recorded in the
documentary evidence relating to the development of
the estate. These were the men who entered into building
agreements, were direct lessees of the Grosvenors, or
were sub-lessees of developers, and it can reasonably
be assumed that there were also many more sub-lessees
whose names have not been traced. While by no means
all of them can have aspired to the description of 'master
builders' they were nevertheless in business in a substantial enough way to be parties to various legal instruments, and must have been supported by countless
journeymen, labourers and apprentices. Their activities
on the estate were, of course, spread over the whole
sixty-year period of its first development but the
names of a substantial number of them occur in documents dating from the first decade, and it is not difficult to envisage Defoe's 'World full of Bricklayers and
Labourers'.
A handful of these 290 can justifiably be called architects, although only two were actually so described. One
of these was Colen or Colin Campbell, who described
himself as Architect to the Prince of Wales when he was
granted a building lease in 1726, (ref. 168) and the second was
John Crunden, who was the building lessee of a terrace
of houses in Hereford Street in 1777. (ref. 169) The others
usually styled themselves 'esquire' or 'gentleman'. They
included William Benson, whose architectural career had
already been cut short before he appeared on the estate;
Edward Shepherd; Thomas Ripley; Roger Morris; and
Thomas Archer, who had a house built in Grosvenor
Square but apparently not of his own designing. In the
case of Shepherd and Morris, however, the line dividing
them from an outstanding master builder like Benjamin
Timbrell is indeed fine.
Any discussion of the role played by architects in the
development of the estate must begin with the enigmatic
presence of Colen Campbell. Sir Richard Grosvenor was
a subscriber to all three volumes of Vitruvius Britannicus
published in Campbell's lifetime and Eaton Hall is
featured in the second volume of 1717, but no account
of any dealings with Campbell has survived in the family
archives, and if Sir Richard Grosvenor and his brothers
had any views on architecture they remain obscure.
Campbell was the lessee of two adjoining house plots in
Brook Street in 1726 and on one of these he built the stillsurviving house (No. 76) in which he lived until his death
there in 1729 (Plate 33c; fig. 2e on page 107). (ref. 170) The
ground on which these houses were built, however, was
originally taken under a building agreement by Edward
Shepherd, and it was as Shepherd's nominee that Campbell received his lease. In fact Shepherd had agreed to
make the site available to Israel Russell, painter-stainer,
and Campbell had subsequently obtained an assignment
of Russell's agreement with Shepherd in 1725. Russell
witnessed the lease. (ref. 168)
Although No. 76 and the now demolished No. 78
Brook Street are the only buildings which can with some
certainty be attributed to Campbell, his involvement in
the development of the estate was undoubtedly more
extensive. We have already seen that in four agreements
concluded shortly before his death he was named as one
of the referees for settling disputes. (ref. 171) More directly, an
engraving in the Gibbs Collection at the Ashmolean
Museum shows the elevation and plan of 'Seven New
intended Houses on the East Side of Grosvenor Sqr. as
Designed by Colen Campbell Esqr. 1725' (Plate 4b). The
engraving was probably intended for publication, but
the circumstances in which the design was made are a
mystery. An agreement to undertake the development of
the east side of the square had been signed by the builder
John Simmons in November 1724. (ref. 150) Whether Simmons
commissioned Campbell to provide a design, whether
Sir Richard Grosvenor procured a design which he hoped
Simmons would follow, this being the first side of the
square to be taken by a builder (although no stipulation
that any overall design had to be adhered to was made in
the agreement), or whether Campbell's contribution was
unsolicited is not known. Perhaps significantly there is
some similarity between the east side as built by Simmons
and Campbell's scheme. Simmons's façade was much
plainer but it was nevertheless treated as a symmetrical
composition with the ends and centre given additional
emphasis (Plate 5). 'By this means', to quote Sir John
Summerson, 'the block assumed the character of a single
palatial building, and an important step had been taken
towards a new conception of street architecture'. (ref. 172)
Campbell's design was for seven houses, and Simmons's
range, as viewed from the square, also appeared to consist
of seven houses, but, in fact, contained an extra house on
the south side with its entrance in Grosvenor Street. As
in Campbell's design, the centre house as built was wider
than the rest, but it had a frontage of seventy feet rather
than sixty as shown by Campbell, and there were corresponding differences in the dimensions of the other
houses. A reference in a letter by Robert Andrews in 1726
to a dispute with Simmons over sewers may be pertinent
although it hardly clarifies matters. Andrews wrote, 'It was
an unlucky misunderstanding at first but such a Genr!
design as that is seldom ever carried on without oversights of that kind which makes it the more pardonable'. (ref. 158)
Part of Simmons's composition survived in a little-altered
state at No. 1 Grosvenor Square until c. 1936 and can be
seen on Plate 8a.
There is another design by Campbell for Grosvenor
Square, architecturally very similar, dating from 1725
in the Royal Institute of British Architects. This consists
of an elevation and plans for three houses with a combined
frontage of approximately 185 feet. (ref. 173) Again nothing is
known about the history of the design. It is, however,
interesting to note that in April 1725 Robert Grosvenor
was granted a lease by his brother of 185 feet of frontage
on the south side of the square, but by August he was contracting with builders to sub-let the ground to them in
building plots of such dimensions that the execution of
Campbell's design would have been impossible. (ref. 174) Edward
Shepherd took 180 feet on the north side of the square in
1725, (ref. 175) but he eventually built four houses there, three
of them to his own rather grand design, which, although
Palladian, cannot be related to Campbell's.
Two other designs attributed to Campbell in the
R.I.B.A. have been associated with Grosvenor Square, (ref. 176)
but they show astylar blocks in the manner of his Old
Burlington Street houses or of his own house in Brook
Street, and the dimensions do not fit any of the sides of
the square.
One of the associates of Campbell who lived on the
estate was John Aislabie, a former Chancellor of the
Exchequer who had been discredited by the South Sea
Bubble. In 1729 Aislabie concluded the purchase of
No. 12 Grosvenor Square, on the north side, from its
building lessee, John Kitchingman, a timber merchant,
moving in during that year. (ref. 177) The house, which was
demolished in 1961, had a Palladian façade (fig. 2a on
page 106) and interior decorative features in the manner
of Campbell.
Another member of Campbell's circle who had a house
on the estate was William Benson, the architect of Wilbury
House in Wiltshire, which was an early example of the
Palladian revival. He had been made Surveyor-General
of the King's Works in 1718, having manoeuvred Wren
out of the office, only to be dismissed himself for incompetence in the following year. (ref. 178) Campbell was his Deputy
Surveyor and Chief Clerk but also lost his position on
Benson's disgrace. Benson was, however, well compensated financially and among other perquisites received
the reversion of the office of Auditor of the Imprests. (ref. 178)
In 1725 he and his brother Benjamin (who had replaced
Hawksmoor as Clerk of the Works at Whitehall in 1718)
jointly took an assignment of a building agreement for
thirty-six feet of frontage on the south side of Grosvenor
Street, where they had two narrow houses built (Nos. 45
and 46, now demolished). (ref. 179) William Benson lived in
No. 45 from 1726 until 1752 and was succeeded as occupant by John Aislabie Benson, his son. (ref. 71) Whether Benson
designed these houses, or what, indeed, they looked like
is not known, and he is chiefly of interest in the history of
the estate as a mortgagee of Sir Richard Grosvenor, to
whom he lent £10,000 in 1732, (ref. 180) probably in connection
with the extensive work then being undertaken at
Grosvenor House, Millbank.
Of the architect-builders who worked on the estate,
Edward Shepherd must rank as the most important, both
in terms of the original extent of his work and of the
amount surviving. He is first recorded on the estate in
1721 as the assignee of an agreement for a plot on the
south side of Brook Street now occupied by part of
Claridge's Hotel. In 1723 he was granted a lease of the
house which he had erected (No. 47), and is there
described as a plasterer, which accords with Vertue's
account of his career. (ref. 181) In November of the same year
he entered into an agreement to build on the north side
of Brook Street between Davies Street and Gilbert
Street, (ref. 133) and in the course of this development (and others
on the estate) he progressed from calling himself a
plasterer to firstly a 'gentleman' and finally an 'esquire'.
It was for part of this ground in Brook Street that Colen
Campbell was granted a building lease in 1726 in the
circumstances described above, and, in view of instances
where Shepherd obtained leases for building tradesmen
who did work for him, it is possible that the two men were
professionally associated in some way. Between 1726 and
1729 they lived within two doors of each other, Shepherd
at No. 72 Brook Street and Campbell at No. 76. (ref. 71) Certainly by the end of the 1720's Shepherd had graduated
from being a plasterer to being an assured if not outstandingly distinguished architect, and Campbell may
have been his mentor.
In the absence of any evidence to the contrary it can
be conjectured that Shepherd was responsible for the
design of the elaborate interior of No. 66 Brook Street
(now part of the Grosvenor Office), of which he was the
building lessee in 1725 (Frontispiece, Plates 6c, 9a). (ref. 182)
Four years later he assigned the house to its first occupant,
Sir Nathaniel Curzon, and Curzon's account at Hoare's
Bank records payments to Shepherd and his mortgagee
but none to any other architect. (ref. 183)
His most remarkable design during these years, however, was for three houses on the north side of Grosvenor
Square (Nos. 18, 19 and 20 in the modern sequence)
which he united behind a Palladian façade of red brick
above a rusticated, stuccoed ground storey with an
attached hexastyle Corinthian portico as its centrepiece
(Plate 5). The design was presumably in existence by
April 1728, when an agreement with a bricklayer who
was to work on the houses made reference to 'the modell
plann or forme and elevation . . . which hath been made
or drawn by the said Edward Shepherd'. (ref. 184) Originally
the composition was symmetrical but within a few years
it was made to seem unbalanced when the adjoining
corner house (No. 21) was refaced to match its neighbour.
Robert Morris wrote in 1734 that 'the same Architect
did compose a regular Range for that whole Side, in which
he has shown a Nobleness of Invention, and the Spirit
and Keeping of the Design is not unworthy of the greatest
British Architect; but the unpolite Taste of several Proprietors of that Ground prevented so beautiful a Performance from being the Ornament of that Side of the
Square'. (ref. 185) That he had Shepherd in mind is suggested
by his reference elsewhere to 'that Grandeur of Esqr;
Shepherd's [range] on the North'. (ref. 186) The only other
undertaker on the north side was Augustin Woollaston,
a brickmaker, who received his frontage at the same time
as Shepherd (March 1725), (ref. 187) but the first building leases
of his ground were granted in 1726, (ref. 188) some two years
before those of Shepherd's houses.
No. 12 North Audley Street, which has an interior as
fine as that of No. 66 Brook Street, was built on part of
the 'hinterland' of Shepherd's ground on the north side
of Grosvenor Square (no. 54 on plan A), presumably for
its first occupant, Colonel (later Field-Marshal and Earl)
Ligonier, who paid a rack rent to Shepherd for some five
years before purchasing the house outright in 1735. (ref. 189)
Although Shepherd was almost certainly the builder,
there is a possibility that he was here working to another's
designs, for on stylistic grounds there is a strong case for
attributing the design of the interior, and in particular
the splendid long gallery at the back (Plate 11), to Sir
Edward Lovett Pearce, the Irish Palladian architect who
provided a design (probably unexecuted) for a house for
Ligonier near Dublin. (ref. 190)
Other large and apparently well-appointed houses by
Shepherd in North Audley Street have been demolished
but in South Audley Street more has survived of the range
from No. 71 to No. 75 where he was the undertaker. (ref. 127)
Thomas Ripley's known work on the estate is confined
to one house, No. 16 Grosvenor Street, for which he was
the building lessee in 1724. He too had graduated in rank,
from 'carpenter' in 1720 when he entered into an agreement to build on this plot to 'esquire' on receipt of the
lease. (ref. 191) The first occupant of the house was Lord
Walpole, (ref. 71) the eldest son of Sir Robert Walpole, and it
was to the latter's influence rather than his own skill that
Ripley owed his advance in the world. Ripley was also one
of the first builders to take ground in Grosvenor Square,
signing an agreement to develop the whole of the west
side in 1725. (ref. 151) He was one of the parties to the arrangement with Sir Richard Grosvenor for the laying out of
the square garden, but by the time building leases of his
plot were granted in 1728 he appears to have relinquished
all his interest under the building agreement to Robert
Scott, carpenter, and Robert Andrews, (ref. 192) and there is no
indication that he had anything whatsoever to do with
the heterogeneous mixture of houses which made up that
side of the square.
Roger Morris is first encountered on the estate in 1727
when (as a bricklayer from St. Marylebone) he was given
possession of some ground in Green Street by Thomas
Barlow and Robert Andrews, who were the undertakers
for a larger area of which Morris's plot formed part. He
built a house for himself at No. 61 Green Street, living
there from 1730 until his death in 1749, and the building
lessee of the neighbouring house on the west (formerly
No. 60, but now joined to No. 61) was James Richards,
who was the master carver of the King's Works and an
associate of Morris. (ref. 193) In 1738 Morris, who had become
master carpenter of His Majesty's Ordnance, built a large
block of stables for the Second Troop of Horse Guards
on the site now largely occupied by Green Street Garden. (ref. 194) To the east of the Guards' stables, on the west
side of Park Street, he was also responsible in his capacity
as developer for the erection of a terrace of narrow-fronted
and apparently unremarkable houses between Wood's
Mews and Green Street, all since demolished. The lessee
of one of these houses was his kinsman, Robert Morris,
the author of the favourable comment about Edward
Shepherd's houses in Grosvenor Square quoted above,
who lived in Park Street from 1739 until his death in
1754. (ref. 195)
The evidence relating to the part played by other
notable architects is more fragmentary and in some cases
entirely speculative. Nicholas Dubois, James Gibbs and,
briefly in 1730, John James were named in several building
agreements as parties to whose judgment disputes were
to be submitted, and Isaac Ware witnessed the agreement
with Thomas Ripley for the west side of Grosvenor
Square, but none of these architects is known to have been
involved in any building work on the estate. Henry Flitcroft is known to have undertaken alterations to No. 4
Grosvenor Square (the great centre house on the east
side) for its second occupant, Lord Malton, (ref. 178) but his
name also occurs in other circumstances in which his
role is less clear. In 1728 he provided a mortgage of £400
on No. 12 Upper Grosvenor Street, which the master
builder Benjamin Timbrell was then building for his own
occupation, (ref. 196) and seven years later he witnessed an
assignment of No. 6 Upper Brook Street (now demolished)
from Edward Shepherd, who had built and briefly occupied the house, to Lord Gower. (ref. 197) Flitcroft was also
associated with Timbrell in other enterprises, and, perhaps coincidentally, the widow of the Duke of Kent's
son, whom Lord Gower was to marry in the year following
his move to Upper Brook Street, had previously lived in
a house built by Timbrell at No. 9 Clifford Street on the
Burlington estate. (ref. 198) Later architects such as Sir Robert
Taylor, James and Samuel Wyatt, or the Adam brothers,
who certainly worked in the area, fall into a somewhat
different category, for they were adapting or embellishing
existing houses for clients rather than concerning themselves with the first development of the estate.
It is impossible to give details of the work of all of the
building tradesmen whose names are known, and information about those who worked in the principal streets is
contained in the tables on pages 172–95. Nevertheless
the contribution of a few may be singled out. Prominent
among the builders, if only by the continual recurrence
of the name, was the family of Barlow. At least three
generations of the family, which came from Forebridge,
Stafford, worked as bricklayers on the estate, but lack of
biographical information and the practice of giving the
same Christian names to successive generations have made
it impossible to determine exact relationships, or, in some
cases, to be sure which member of the family was responsible for a particular building. There were four Williams,
and probably two Johns and two Georges who were all
involved in building work. The eldest William Barlow,
sometimes described as William Barlow senior, was the
son of Hugh Barlow of Stafford, husbandman, and was
apprenticed to a member of the Tylers' and Bricklayers'
Company in 1705. (ref. 199) He himself took as apprentice in
1715 another William Barlow, son of George Barlow of
Stafford, mason, and therefore perhaps his cousin, (ref. 200) and
this may be the William Barlow, sometimes described as
William Barlow junior, who built the two adjoining
houses, No. 88 Brook Street and No. 9 Grosvenor
Square. (ref. 201) William Barlow senior was extensively involved
in the earliest building activity at the eastern edge of the
estate and continued to be active until his death in 1743.
He was appointed bricklayer to the parish of St. George,
Hanover Square, in 1725, and in this capacity helped to
build the workhouse on the south side of Mount Street. (ref. 202)
He was also one of the four proprietors of the Grosvenor
Chapel. (ref. 203) None of the houses of which he was the building
lessee have, however, escaped rebuilding. His grandson,
Sir George Hilaro Barlow, was created a baronet in
1803. (ref. 204) No relationship has been discovered between
the Barlow family of bricklayers and Thomas Barlow,
carpenter, who was the estate surveyor.
The position of Benjamin Timbrell as one of the foremost master builders working in the West End of London
in the first half of the eighteenth century is well known, (ref. 178)
but his work on the Grosvenor estate has not so far been
recorded. He was the building lessee of some ten substantial houses there (including at least two in Grosvenor
Square), of which No. 52 Grosvenor Street (Plate 8c;
fig. 16 on page 136), No. 69 Grosvenor Street and No. 12
Upper Grosvenor Street survive in part. The latter was
his own residence, where he lived from 1729 until 1751. (ref. 71)
He was almost certainly involved in the building of other
houses where he was not the direct lessee, and of the four
proprietor-builders of the Grosvenor Chapel he is the
most likely to have provided the design (fig. 7 on page 119).
As one of the original vestrymen of the parish of St.
George, Hanover Square, he often supplied plans for
parish buildings, including the workhouse. (ref. 205) His son,
William, also worked as a carpenter on the estate (ref. 206) and
his daughter, Martha, married John Barlow, (ref. 207) the son of
William Barlow senior.
With Thomas Barlow and Benjamin Timbrell, Thomas
Phillips, carpenter, was one of the relatively few nonaristocratic vestrymen appointed by the 'Fifty Churches'
Commissioners in 1725 to govern the new parish of St.
George, and he also assisted in the design and execution
of parish buildings including the workhouse (with
Timbrell). (ref. 208) He had been employed, with Timbrell, as
carpenter for the building of the church of St. Martin in
the Fields and enjoyed a high standing in his trade. (ref. 178)
On the Grosvenor estate he built houses in Brook Street
and Grosvenor Square. From 1723 until his death in
1736 he lived in one of these houses, No. 39 Brook
Street (ref. 209) (later partly rebuilt by Jeffry Wyatville), and
his nephew, John Phillips, also a well-known master
builder, lived there from 1741 until his death in 1775 or
1776. (ref. 210) John Phillips was the undertaker for the last area
of the estate to be developed—in the north-west corner—
and he was probably the builder of the two large, detached
houses erected there, Camelford House and the house
later called Somerset House, the latter apparently to his
own design. (ref. 211)
John Simmons, carpenter, the builder of the east side
of Grosvenor Square, was the son of John Simmons,
citizen and cooper of London, and was himself a freeman
of the Merchant Taylors' Company. (ref. 212) He was probably
the John Simmons, joiner, who worked for Gibbs at the
church of St. Mary-le-Strand. (ref. 213) Besides his considerable
undertaking in Grosvenor Square he also built several
houses in Brook Street, Grosvenor Street and Upper
Brook Street. He had a house and workshop on the
Grosvenor estate at Millbank, (ref. 214) and he was thus one of
the few builders working on the Mayfair estate who did
not live either there or in adjacent parts of the parish of
St. George, Hanover Square. After his death in 1738 his
widow, Elizabeth, continued his business until her own
death in 1755. When their grand-daughter married in
1778 she was able to provide a dowry consisting of some
property at Millbank and eight houses in Mayfair (including two in Grosvenor Square) which had been leased to
John or Elizabeth Simmons and were then still owned by
their descendants, having in the meantime been let
on short-term leases at rack rents. (ref. 215)
Other builders who had a substantial impact on the
development of the estate included Robert Scott, carpenter, who was also one of the proprietors of the
Grosvenor Chapel (with Timbrell, William Barlow senior
and Robert Andrews); (ref. 203) he was the builder of some ten
houses in Grosvenor Street, Grosvenor Square and
Upper Grosvenor Street, and of numerous other houses
in the lesser streets where he was often joint lessee.
Lawrence Neale, carpenter, who lived at No. 24 Upper
Grosvenor Street (on part of the site now occupied by
No. 93 Park Lane) from 1730 to 1745, (ref. 71) was responsible
for over a dozen substantial houses, including three in
Grosvenor Square. Richard Lissiman, mason, who was
the son of a gunsmith from Colwall in Herefordshire and
who died in 1733, was the building lessee of several houses
in Grosvenor Street, including the important trio of
Nos. 33–35 (consec.), and Upper Grosvenor Street. (ref. 216)
Another builder who died at an early stage in the development was John Green, from whom Green Street almost
certainly takes its name. He was drowned in 1737 when
he fell into a well he was inspecting for the Marquess of
Carnarvon at No. 43 Upper Grosvenor Street, a house
which he had himself built some six years previously.
He was then living in Green Street and was described
as 'a very wealthy Builder'. (ref. 217) In the middle years of the
eighteenth century the names of John Spencer, carpenter,
and Edmund Rush, mason, appear regularly in the estate
records, both as builders and developers of substantial
areas in the vicinity of South Street, Portugal Street (now
Balfour Place), Green Street, Norfolk (now Dunraven)
Street, and the west end of Upper Brook Street where
house-building was still in progress in the 1750's. Spencer
lived on the estate for several years, latterly at No. 60
Green Street (now joined to No. 61), but in 1771 he was
declared bankrupt and quit his house, his subsequent
movements being unknown. (ref. 218)