CHAPTER III
The Architecture of the Piazza and
St. Paul's Church
Confronted with the bustling activity
of Covent Garden Market and the diffuse
collection of buildings that form its setting,
it is not easy to recognize the lineaments of Inigo
Jones's great Piazza, the first and finest of
London's long sequence of residential squares.
Unsurpassed for the uniformity and architectural
quality of its buildings, it remained unique in its
axially related combination of open space, church,
and palatially fronted houses. Here, with the
market soon afterwards established on the south
side, were to be found all the elements regarded as
desirable in each major suburban development
during the following century.
The first comprehensive description of the
Piazza is almost certainly of late seventeenthcentury date, though made familiar by its inclusion
in Strype's 1720 edition of Stow's Survey, where
it is stated that 'Covent Garden, particularly so
called, is a curious, large, and airy Square, enclosed by Rails, between which Rails and the
Houses runs a fair Street. The Square is always
kept well gravelled for the Accommodation of
the People to walk there, and so raised with an
easy Ascent to the Middle, that the Rain soon
draineth off, and the gravelly Bottom becomes dry,
fit to walk on…. On the North and East Sides
are Rows of very good and large Houses, called
the Piazzo's, sustained by Stone Pillars, to support
the Buildings. Under which are Walks, broad and
convenient, paved with Freestone. The South
Side lieth open to Bedford Garden, where there is
a small Grotto of Trees, most pleasant in the
Summer Season; and in this Side there is kept a
Market for Fruits, Herbs, Roots, and Flowers,
every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday; …
And on the West Side is the Church of St. Paul's
Covent Garden,… At the Entrance into this
Church out of the Garden, there is a curious
Portico ascended up by Steps, as well the Front
Part, as both Sides: The Portico is sustained by
four large Stone Pillars; the two Middlemost
being round, and the others square, having a Door
at each Side this Way, for Entrance; as also there
be Doors on each Side of the Church, made uniform, for a Passage into the Church-yard….
The Builder of this famous Church was that rare
Architect Mr. Inigo Jones, one of the greatest
Restorers of the ancient Roman Way of Building,
and this the first. How magnificent and great doth
it present itself to the Beholder. The Portico is
magnificent…. It is the only View, in Imitation of the Italians, we have in or about London.'
(ref. 1)
The dimensions of the quadrangular open space
were precisely defined in the grant of market
rights (see page 130) as being 420 feet from east to
west, and 316 feet from north to south. Jones's
architectural scheme was balanced on the long
east-west axis with its focus in the portico of the
church, projecting centrally from the west side
where low screen walls, flanking monumental
gateways to the churchyard, linked the church to
single houses. These ended the north side of
Henrietta Street and the south side of King Street,
both 50-feet-wide streets entering the Piazza
from the west. The tall and uniformly fronted
portico houses lined the north and east sides,
which were broken centrally by streets intended
to be 60 feet wide, James Street on the north and
Russell Street on the east, the latter continuing an
existing street leading from Drury Lane. The
garden wall of Bedford House formed the south
side, and the fourth Earl of Bedford probably
never intended that this side should be built upon.
But it is not unreasonable to assume, nonetheless,
that Jones himself envisaged the building there
of portico houses responding to those on the north
side.
The layout owed much to Jones's first-hand
knowledge of formally designed Italian piazze
with churches, such as those in Venice, Florence
(Piazza SS. Annunziata) and Leghorn (Piazza
d'Arme, see fig. 2). In fact, John Evelyn's diary
for 21 October 1644 records an impression of
Leghorn, where the late sixteenth-century piazza
'with the Church, whose 4 Columns at the
Portico are of black marble Polish'd, is very fayre
& commodious; and gave the first hint to the
building both of the Church & Piazza in CoventGarden with us, though very imperfectly
pursu'd'. (ref. 2)
(fn. a) The Leghorn piazza had already influenced town improvements in France, especially
in Paris where Henri IV and his queen, Marie
de Médicis, had promoted the building of the
Place Royale in 1605 and the Place Dauphine in
1607 (both designed by Claude de Chastillon).
Jones presumably knew these French examples as
well, for the arcaded and groin-vaulted walks
below the portico buildings of Covent Garden
closely resembled those of the Place Royale, intended by the French king to provide a public
promenoir. But while it is reasonable to accept
Leghorn as a prototype for the plan of Covent
Garden, and to recognize the influence of the
Place Royale's promenoir in the covered walks of
the portico buildings, their arcaded and pilastered
fronts may well be regarded as 'Tuscan' versions
of two markedly similar palace fronts in Bologna,
Domenico Tibaldi's Palazzo Salem Magnani of
1577 and Floriano Ambrosini's Palazzo Rossi
of 1594. These fronts, probably derived in their
turn from Sanmicheli's Palazzo Guastaversa of
1555 in Verona, are composed alike of a tall
rusticated arcade opening to a groin-vaulted
loggia, surmounted by a two-storeyed face divided
into equal bays by pilasters. As fairly new buildings they might well have interested Jones when
he visited Bologna during his second Italian
journey. Even if this apparent affinity can be
proved coincidental, there is no questioning the
fact that the Covent Garden facades owed most
to Italian palace fronts of this Sanmichelian
type and least to the Place Royale houses which,
though uniform, are astylar, individually articulated, and crowned separately with high pavilion
roofs.
Figure 2:
Piazza d'Arme, Leghorn, plan. Redrawn from
an engraving in the King's Topographical Collection in
the British Museum, vol. lxxx, no. 12
While indebtedness to his contemporary sources
must be recognized, some important features of
Covent Garden show that Jones's inspiration was
rooted in antiquity, especially in the combinations
of temple and forum that his adopted master,
Palladio, described and illustrated in the Quattro
Libri. As S.E. Rasmussen truly observed 'Covent
Garden Piazza is just the monumental square
which a classically trained artist of those days
would want to create. It is an antique forum
governed by the large one-cell-building of a
temple…. He has followed the indications of
architectural theorists (Vitruvius) for a "temple of
the Tuscan order of columns" and has given the
building enormous eaves.' (ref. 4) Moreover, as Sir
John Summerson has demonstrated, Covent
Garden could be regarded as 'a comprehensive
essay in the Tuscan mood—Tuscan all the way
from the high sophistication of the portico to the
vernacular of the houses'. (ref. 5)
Some early views combine to give a fairly complete picture of the Piazza before any major
changes were made to the original buildings except, perhaps, the church. Hollar's prospect of the
west side (Plate 12a) is not an accurate representation and was probably made in Antwerp, hence
the Flemish character of the gabled houses in the
adjoining streets, but his pictorial map (Plate I)
offers a convincing bird's-eye view of the whole
Piazza and its surroundings as seen from the southwest. It also shows, most effectively, the striking
contrast in scale between the nobly proportioned
fronts of the Piazza's portico buildings and the
majority of the houses in the adjacent streets.
All the buildings as they appeared before 1666–7
are delineated with seeming accuracy in a painting
at Wilton House, reproduced on Plate 11. The
evidence presented by these views is largely
confirmed and supplemented by the plans and
elevations, presumably based on Colen Campbell's
own measurements, given in Vitruvius Britannicus
(Plate 13). (ref. 6)
St. Paul's Church and the West
Side of the Piazza
Plates 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27b, 28a, 29b, 30a, 34b,
35
In any detailed description of the Piazza, St.
Paul's Church should be given precedence, for
despite its modest size it dominated the whole
scheme by virtue of its salient position, and by the
bold simplicity and superior scale of its design.
Jones's adoption of the temple form for this
church (one of the first to be built in London
for Protestant worship) seems to confirm his
having conceived the Piazza as an antique forum.
There was, moreover, precedent in the Huguenots' use of similar classical forms for their conventicles, such as Salomon de Brosse's basilican
Temple de Charenton, Paris.
Hawksmoor's version of 'The Tuscan Temple
in Covent Garden' (fig. 3) is a poor and inaccurate recording of St. Paul's, but it can be
properly regarded as a fair interpretation of
Jones's original conception, for it shows the
rectangular temple structure of cella and portico
uncluttered by the vestries and porches projecting
from either side. Hawksmoor exaggerated, however, in describing St. Paul's as a Tuscan temple,
which Vitruvius states should be five parts wide
and six parts deep, half this depth being taken up
by a portico, tetrastyle with two rows of columns,
leading to three small cellae in parallel arrangement. St. Paul's is a single-cell temple with a
portico in antis, measuring externally some 135 by
58 feet. The cella, or church interior, is a double
square in plan, 50 by 100 feet, its height of 35 feet
to the flat ceiling being about three quarters of
the square. The cella's east wall conforms with the
west frontage line of the Piazza, so that the
portico projects for its full depth of 23 feet into
the open space. Unlike Leghorn, the church
portico was not closely related to the arcaded
walks below the houses of the Piazza.
Figure 3:
St. Paul's Church as a Tuscan temple. From Henry Maundrell's A Journey from Aleppo to
Jerusalem, third edition, 1714
Much has been written about the true function
of the portico in relation to the church, in view of
the fact that it has never served as the principal
entrance, the great doorway being a sham. Because of this, Jones has had his detractors and
apologists, but sufficient evidence has now been
found in a work of William Prynne's to show that
this anomaly resulted from an enforced change of
orientation during the building (see page 99).
Confirmation appears in the Earl of Bedford's
accounts (see pages 271–81), which show that the
bricklayers were paid 'for the alterations of the
doores and windowes at the east and west end of ye
church' and for 'workeing upp the doore at the
east end in the portico'. The carpenters also were
paid for 'saweing of the timber and frameing
fower windowes for ye east and west end of ye
church occacioned by the alteracion'. (ref. 7)
The Earl's reputedly parsimonious attitude
towards building the church, to the effect that he
'would not have it much better than a barn', is
the traditional reason for Jones's use of the Tuscan
order for the portico. But although St. Paul's was
originally an austere structure of brick, sparingly
dressed with stone, stucco and wood, it had
nothing of meanness in its effect of grand simplicity. Sir John Summerson has suggested that
the Tuscan, being the simplest and most primitive
of the five orders, might well have appealed to
both patron and architect as the one most appropriate to the 'fundamental character of the
Protestant religion'. Such a view is consistent
with Jones's rejection of the sophisticated nearDoric versions of the Tuscan order produced by
Serlio and Scamozzi, in favour of the Vitruvian
formula so faithfully interpreted by Palladio in his
illustration of a Tuscan temple front, made for
Barbaro's 1556 edition of the Dieci Libri.
Several of the masque designs show that Jones
made undisguised borrowings from the works of
other designers, and for the portico of St. Paul's
he was apparently content to translate Palladio's
crude but clear engraving into the reality of stone
and timber, preserving the bold rustic character
of the order, but reducing the over-squat effect
of Palladio's portico by decreasing the intercolumniation widths and increasing the pediment's
rake. In one important respect Jones deserted
Palladio for Scamozzi, by designing his portico
in antis and giving the engaged outer columns
square shafts. John Hiort's measured drawing of
St. Paul's, made before the alterations of 1788–9
(Plate 14b), gives the superior diameter of the
columns as 3 feet 11¾ inches, and their overall
height as 29 feet 10½ inches, or seven and a half
diameters. This accords with Scamozzi but not
with Vitruvius, who specifies a column height of
seven diameters, as shown in the front row of
Palladio's portico. But Palladio also shows a
column of the inner row which is seven and a half
diameters high, and this was probably Jones's
prototype.
The column bases and capitals are each half a
diameter high and are moulded in conformity with
Palladio's Vitruvian profiles, but the bases have
square plinths instead of the circular form decreed
by Vitruvius. Each shaft, square as well as round,
is boldly entasized in its upper two-thirds, reducing
the top diameter to 3 feet. The middle and side
intercolumniations are respectively four and a
half and three and a half diameters wide as compared with Palladio's seven and five diameters.
As Vitruvius specified, the stone columns supported a trabeation of wooden beams, probably
painted at first but now faced with stone slabs,
forming a plain architrave, 3 feet high. Above
this a small flat fascia breaks slightly forward,
out of which the plain wooden mutules or cantilevers, spaced at five-and-a-half-feet centres,
project for nearly 7 feet to support the flat wooden
eaves that serves the Tuscan order as a cornice,
and here frames the pediment. Below the soffit of
the eaves runs a small moulding, returned round
the mutules, and above the raking eaves is a simple
cymatium. The eaves projection is only slightly
less than the one quarter of the column height
given by Vitruvius, and the horizontal eaves is
supported by eleven mutules, as shown by
Palladio. The pediment's tympanum, now faced
with stone, was originally of brick coated with
'morter' and painted, while painted pseudocoffers relieved the severity of the 'planchier' or
eaves soffit. (ref. 7) This decoration was repeated all
round the eaves. Above the pediment's apex
was placed a small stone pedestal bearing a wooden
cross.
Inside the portico, the east wall of the church is
dominated by the great doorway in the centre, now
filled with stonework and obviously a sham, but
originally furnished with a fixed wooden door of
two leaves. (ref. 7) The stone doorcase appears to be as
designed by Jones, with a wide moulded architrave, plain frieze, and a bold cornice, its corona
resting on a pair of scroll-ended consoles rising
from acanthus leaves, these being the only carved
ornaments. Above the great door is a round
window within a moulded architrave matching
those of the tall round-headed windows on either
side. Below these windows there were originally
small doorways, their openings simply dressed with
unchamfered long-and-short stones. These doorways, which were inserted to compensate for the
closing up of the great door, were restored with
moulded architraves by Hardwick and altogether
eliminated by Butterfield in 1871–2.
The side walls of the portico have been completely altered, the present wide and lofty stone
arches having been introduced during the alterations of 1878–82 (see page 120 and Plate 18).
The original openings were much smaller, nearly
matching in size and proportions the arch-headed
windows of the church, and having a basic
resemblance to the side arches of Palladio's
porticoes at Vicenza (the Villa Rotonda and
Palazzo Chiericati), Maser (Villa Barbaro,
chapel), and Lonedo (Villa Piovene). With
Palladio, however, these arches do not serve as
entrances but as unglazed windows, and the
openings at St. Paul's may have been designed for
the same purpose: as these arches were splayed
on the inside it is worth noting that the bricklayers' account makes a special reference to
'hewing bricks for the splayes and heads of ye
portico windowes'. It remains to add that the wall
surfaces within the portico, now faced with ashlar,
were originally of brick coated with 'morter …
for the painter to woorke upon' while the plain
plaster ceiling was whitewashed. (ref. 7)
Successive rises in the level of the Piazza have
gradually eliminated the stepped approach which
must have added considerably to the impressive
effect of the portico. Campbell's Vitruvius
Britannicus (plates (ref. 6) and the Crowle Pennant plan (ref. 8)
both show a wide flight across the front, having
seven risers between massive pedestals with
moulded cappings, projecting from below the bases
of the outer columns. This corresponds closely
with the mason's account for '341 foote 2 inches
of stepp goeing upp into the portico' and for the
ashlar, moulding, and 'flatt stone to cover the
pedistalls'. (ref. 7) Nothing in the accounts, however,
seems related to the small but elaborate twodirectional flights of steps flanking the portico,
shown by both pictorial sources mentioned. These
steps met in a landing level with the portico floor,
in front of a short flight rising to a side porch
serving a gallery staircase. The side galleries were
additions to the church, the south in 1647–9 and
the north before 1655, and similar dates apply to
the staircases and external steps serving them. In
this connexion it is worth noting that Hollar's
etching of the Piazza's west side, and a drawing
of the same view in the Westminster City
Library (Plate 12), show steps and a porch only
on the south side of the portico, suggesting that
both views were made from notes taken after
1649 but before the north gallery was added.
When the church was oriented, the west front
was finished to a design generally resembling
the portico's inside face, below an eaves-framed
pediment having a pedestal and cross on its apex.
There were no small doors below the roundheaded windows that flank the great doorway
(now the principal entrance), and long-and-short
stones with chamfered arrises were used to quoin
the angles. The bricklayers' account, however,
refers to 'the frontespeece on the west deducting
the windowes and the arch at first left into the
chappell'. (ref. 7) This suggests that the great door
replaced a large round-headed window or,
possibly, an arched opening intended to frame a
shallow chancel. The stone quoins were criticized by Batty Langley for their unorthodox and
unconstructional character, being equally long
or short on both faces. (ref. 9) Although Paul Sandby's
fine view of 1766 (Plate 15a) corrects this lapse
of taste, the mason's account seems to confirm
Langley's observation by mentioning the provision of '64 great quoines' and '64 little quoines'. (ref. 7)
Some of them were used to dress the outer angles
of the wings, square in plan, that project from
each side of the church, recessed about 4 feet from
the west front. These wings were built at the
same time as the body of the church, the north to
serve as a vestry and the south for a belfry, each
having a plain west face, a round-headed window
in the north or south side, and a similar window
in the east face above a small doorway approached
by a stair rising alongside the side wall of the
church. These were probably the 'two paire
of little stayres on the north and south side' for
which the mason supplied 95 feet of 'steppe' and
108 feet 11 inches of 'paveing'. Like the wide
flight with seven risers serving the great west door,
these little stairs were bounded by brickwork
capped with a 'raile' of stone, the west front stair
alone having 'plinths and pedestals'. Both wings
were finished alike with a 'cornishment about the
eaves …, with the seeleing joysts in the same',
which suggests something very similar to the
mutuled eaves-cornice of the 'portico buildings'.
These cornices were later replaced by the entablature of Ionic character seen in Sandby's view,
which also shows the hipped roof, originally
covered with red and black Flanders tiles, and an
arcaded and pedimented bellcote of wood rising
out of the belfry roof. This can be identified as
the 'lanthorne for the bell' mentioned in the
original accounts of the carpenters and plumbers. (ref. 7)
The north and south sides of the church were
alike in their very simple composition. Just east
of the projecting square wing, the plain brick wall
face was pierced at 24-feet centres by four tall and
proportionately narrow round-headed windows,
followed by the arch opening to the portico, of
similar form but placed in a lower position beneath
a plain oblong sunk panel. All the windowopenings, and the portico arches, were dressed
alike with moulded stone architraves unbroken by
imposts or keystones, giving them an early
Florentine Renaissance character. The timberframed windows were furnished with iron saddlebars and opening casements of iron, 3 feet 10
inches high and 2 feet 7 inches wide, (ref. 7) and their
appearance was probably much as depicted by
Sutton Nicholls in his view of the Piazza (Plate
26). The Tuscan architrave and mutulesupported eaves, extending in unbroken lines from
above the east portico's square column to the
quoined west angle, mitigated the disturbing
effect of the projecting west wings.
Although it is usually stated that the brickwork
generally was finished with stucco at the time of
building, there is no evidence confirming this in
the accounts, where the plasterer's stated areas
allow only for the walls and ceilings within the
church, vestry and belfry, and the ceiling of the
portico. It may be that the exterior brickwork,
like that of the Queen's House, Greenwich, was at
first limewhited, and, the bricks proving porous,
was later covered with stucco. It is true that most
early views seem to suggest a stucco facing, but
it is evident that none is quite contemporary
with the first completion of the building, as they
also show the shallow two-storeyed bays containing the gallery staircases, projecting between
the easternmost two windows on either side of the
church: these bay projections, each having a
'croisée' window in its upper face and a pedimentended roof, could only have been necessary additions when the side galleries within the church
were constructed between 1647 and 1655.
Hollar's mid seventeenth-century pictorial map
(Plate 1) shows the south side of the church with
the staircase-bay, and below the window to the
west appears a small doorway approached by
steps rising from the west. The steps are very
sketchily indicated and there is no obvious
reference to the door in the building accounts
apart from John Long's charge of 10s. for
'workeing up two little doore waies on each side of
the church and finishing over them'. The doors
shown by Hollar would have given direct entrance
to the chancel space.
Lacking pictorial records or dependable contemporary descriptions, any attempt to construct
a verbal picture of the original interior must
depend on an interpretation of such evidence as
the building accounts contain. To begin with,
there were no galleries, even across the west end,
to mar the simple nobility of Jones's finely proportioned room, with its plain walls, wainscot
pews and dado, and flat ceiling painted with grotesque ornament framing a false perspective scene.
The accounts show that Martin Estbourne, the
plasterer, was paid £38 11s. 'for lathing and laying
771 yards on the ceeleing of the church portico
vestry and bellfrey' at 12d. the yard and £23 16s. 8d.
for having 'laid on bricke and rendered 1,114
yardes at 5d the yard, alloweing in the workmanshipp bestowed in the laying the archatrave round
about the inside of the church.' This architrave
of plaster, laid on hewn brickwork, was possibly
the 'Cornish' lined by Peter Penson, one of the
joiners, with 'leaves of wainscott'. Estbourne also
whitewashed and sized the ceiling of the church
before it was painted, 'and then ye walls of the
church bellfrey and vestry and ceeleing of ye
portico'. Mathew Goodericke (Goodrich) and
Edward Perce (Peirce), two skilful decorative
painters employed elsewhere by Jones, were paid
£80 for 'painting the perspective groteske and
other ornaments on the ceeleing of the church in
water collours', that is, distemper. (ref. 7)
The east part of the church floor was raised by
a 'Portland stepp wrought with a moulding' to
form a chancel, 35 feet 7 inches deep, (ref. 10) where the
communion table was placed on another stepping
paved with black and white marble squares, and
(probably) enclosed by a wainscot railing with
turned and carved balusters. (ref. 7) The table and railing were made by Peter Penson, who shared the
joinery work with Jeremie Kellett. Penson also
constructed wainscot screens or lobbies in front of
the two small east doors, which were finished with
architraves and cornices of wainscot. Kellett
made the 'upper part of the readers pew with the
deske' and the stepps into the readers pewe' as
well as the 'Joyners woorke of the pullpitt with the
type and collomes to support it, and the stepps of
wainscotte seene above the pewes upp into the
same'. The two joiners shared responsibility
for the wainscot dado extending round the church,
and the 'particons' forming the pews. For fitting
these up, Penson supplied '59 seats desks and
kneelers at 6s. 3d. the pew, while Kellett provided
'the deskes braketts and kneelers of 55 pewes',
again at 6s. 3d. the pew. There were some pews
on either side of the chancel, reached by 'ovell'
steps, but most were in the body of the church,
grouped to form a central range having a 'long
particion running through the middle', and
ranges of short pews against the walls. The aisles
serving the pews were paved with Purbeck stone.
The churchyard lying north, west and south of
St. Paul's was screened from the Piazza by walls
extending north and south in line with the inside
face of the portico. Hollar's etching and the
drawing in the Westminster City Library (Plate
12) both show the high brick walls that evidently
preceded the simple iron railings and low walls
depicted in later views. These screens, linking
the church with the single houses terminating the
west side of the Piazza, were broken centrally by
pedimented gateways executed in cut brickwork,
perhaps with cement dressings. For the 'workmanshipp of the two gates and walls' John Benson,
junior, received £54, and for 'syment for the two
gates' 3s. 6d. As Sir John Summerson has pointed
out, the design was probably based on the rusticated Tuscan order decorating the lowest arcade
of the Roman amphitheatre at Verona, recorded
by Serlio and Palladio. Here the brick face was
striated with V-jointing to suggest masonry
courses, and the opening, 4 feet wide and about 10
feet high, had an arched head rising from moulded
imposts and formed of eight voussoirs with a
projecting keystone. Instead of engaged columns,
as at Verona, Jones used Tuscan pilasters with
rusticated shafts placed centrally against the arch
piers to support the entablature and triangular
pediment (Plate24). These gateways originally
had stone thresholds and were furnished with
panelled doors of painted wood. (ref. 7)
Campbell's elevation of the west side of the
Piazza (Plate 13a) ends with single houses having
matching fronts, three storeys high and three
windows wide. These fronts, being only some
30 feet high to the eaves, appear to be properly
subservient in scale to the church, and in height
to the portico houses on the north and east sides,
although well related to the latter by their
architectural details. The ground storey, where
the doorway is placed between two windows, is
less than half the height of the arcades but its face
is rusticated to the same scale, and although the
upper face is astylar and has long-and-short
quoined angles, the windows are dressed to correspond with those in the pilastered bays above the
arcades. The same plain modillioned eavescornice is employed, beneath a hipped roof with
three pedimented dormers like those of the portico
houses. The north-west house was rebuilt to a
different design in 1689–90, but to restore the
original symmetry Campbell delineated both
houses in the same ideal form, just as he included
a south side of portico houses to render Jones's
design complete. Nevertheless, the west-side
houses in the Wilton painting and the south-west
house in the foreground of Sutton Nicholls's
view of c. 1717–28 (Plates 11, 26) correspond
very closely with what Campbell shows, except
for the treatment of the ground storey and the
omission of the first-floor balconies. These
various sources can be regarded as convincing
evidence that both the west-side houses were
originally built to the same Jonesian design,
particularly as Nicholls was careful to record the
rebuildings and alterations that had already disrupted the original uniformity of the Piazza.
The Hollar view of the west side, and the Westminster City Library drawing, although incorrect in many details, both show the west-side
houses with 'purgulas' above the ground storey,
and so does the Wilton painting. If a balcony was
still existing on the south-west house when
Campbell made his drawings, he might well have
regarded it as an accretion, since he omitted those
on the north side of the Piazza.
The Piazza, North and East
Sides: the portico houses
Plates 1, 11, 13, 26, 27a, 28b, 29a, 30b, 31,
32, 33, 34a
The north and east sides were lined with the
celebrated portico buildings described in Strype as
'stately Buildings for the dwelling of Persons of
Repute and Quality'. (ref. 11) Although these houses
differed one from another in plan and frontage
width, they shared a facade of uniform and repetitious design, composed of a lofty arcaded base of
rusticated stonework sustaining a two-storeyed
upper face of red brick, divided by plain pilasterstrips into bays, one window wide, corresponding
to the arched openings below. Both sides were
divided into two equal terraces by the wide streets
entering the Piazza axially. Each of the northside terraces had twelve bays, those on the shorter
east side had eight, and towards the entering streets
there were return fronts of one bay, being about
half the depth of the houses.
According to the elevation in Vitruvius
Britannicus, the fronts were 50 feet high to the top
of the eaves-cornice, with the 40-degrees pitched
roof adding another 11 feet. The arcaded face of
rusticated stonework was 22 feet high, including
the finishing bandcourse. Campbell analyses with
approval the proportions of the buildings, stating
that 'The Rustick Arcade round the Square is of
an excellent Composition, the Arches are 10 Feet
wide, and 20 high, the Piers are four Feet in
Front, which is two fifths of the Arch, and eight
at the Angles; above the Arcade is one grand
Story and an Attick; the Windows are dress'd
with a regular Entablature, in Width are equal to
the Piers, and two Diameters in Height; the
Attick Windows are under the Square. It were
to be wished, our Artificers would observe this
just Proportion in Piers and Windows, which
would prevent the Lanthorn Way of Building, so
much in Practice of late Years.' (ref. 12)
Despite minor differences between them, the
more obviously reliable graphic representations of
the Piazza, together with the accounts relating to
the fourth Earl's building of the north-east range
(Nos. 13–14, 16–19 on fig. 45), (ref. 13) make it possible to augment Campbell's very brief description.
All the evidence shows that the arcade's piers
were formed of a plain plinth, nine channeljointed courses, and a plain impost. Each arch
was formed with six channel-jointed voussoirs
on either side of a plain projecting keystone which
merged with the storey bandcourse. For the
stonework of the north-east arcade, with eight
bays to the Piazza and one to Russell Street,
William Mason charged 2s. 8d. per foot for
'workeing and setting' the ten piers, plinths,
springers and keystones, while 2s. 6d. per foot
was charged for the bandcourse or 'fascia', which
was made 'one inch more in height then was
agreed by Covenant which was appointed by
Mr. Decause'. (fn. b)
To conform with the arcade spacing, the twostoreyed upper face of brick was divided into bays
by plain pilaster-strips, 2 feet wide, round which
were returned the plinth of the principal-storey
pedestal and the bed-mouldings of the eavescornice. Although the pilasters and principalstorey window-aprons are generally depicted with
what appears to be a stucco finish, there is no
evidence of this in the fourth Earl's building
accounts. The principal-storey windows had
plain pedestal-aprons, and the openings, 4 feet 6
inches wide and 9 feet high, were dressed alike
with a sill, moulded architrave, pulvinated frieze,
and cornice, all of stone, the same architrave being
used to frame the upper-storey windows, which
were 4 feet 6 inches wide and 4 feet high. The
mason's charges per foot were 2s. 8d. for the sill,
2s. 8d. for the architrave 'Jaumes and heads',
2s. 4d. for the frieze, and 5s. for the cornice. The
openings were furnished with iron casements in
frames of wood, presumably oak. For the wooden
eaves-cornice, with its plain modillions or
'Cartouses', Richard Vesey the carpenter charged
3s. 4d. per foot. In the tiled roof were dormer or
'Lucarne' windows, placed to range with the
windows in the front below. The carpenter
charged £3 each for making and fixing these
'Lucarne' windows, which were furnished alike
with a pair of iron casements hung flush in a
narrow frame finished with a triangular pediment
and dressed with lead.
The portico walks were 21 feet wide inside, and
high enough to embrace the ground storey (hall
floor) and second storey (mezzanine) of the
houses. Raised two steps above the level of the
open space, these walks were paved with Mitchells ('Purbeck stones … picked all of a Size,
from fifteen Inches to two Feet' (ref. 14) ). The arcade
piers, without channelling on the inside face,
apparently had no responds on the opposite wall
face to which they were linked by plain transverse arches of semi-elliptical form, springing
from forward breaks in the arcade impost, these
resting on concave-profiled brackets called
'Chaptarells' in the accounts of John Taylor, the
bricklayer responsible for forming them. The
transverse arches divided the semi-elliptical
vaulted ceiling into oblong bays, each intersected
by a transverse vault of semi-circular section.
Martin Estbourne, plasterer, charged 1s. 5d. per
yard for executing in lath and plaster the vaulted
ceiling of the north-east portico walk. The brickwork of the inside wall was probably plastered,
but there is no conclusive evidence to settle the
disposition and dress of the doors and windows.
Sutton Nicholls follows Campbell in showing
doors and windows placed in alternate bays, the
doorways dressed with jambs of long-and-short
rustic blocks and a lintel broken by a quintuple
keystone, and the windows with band architraves
broken by three voussoirs. There is, however,
nothing relating to this in the accounts, although
Campbell's delineation of plain segmental-headed
mezzanine windows can be identified with
Richard Vesey's 'Clearestory lights in the Portico
at 3s 6d the light haveing compasse heads'.
The north-east range originally consisted of
three houses, each provided by Richard Vesey
with a 'paire of double doores into the Portico
at 30s the peece', although only two were
provided with iron knockers.
Most of the surviving evidence concerning the
internal planning and finishing of the portico
houses relates to those in this north-east range,
erected as three houses by the fourth Earl to advance the building scheme and serve as models for
other builders to follow, and completed in 1635.
From the building accounts (which are printed on
pages 282–92), (ref. 13) and more particularly from the
inventories prepared in connexion with the first
leases to (Sir) Edward Sydenham and Sir Edmund
Verney, (ref. 15) it has been possible to suggest plans of
these houses (figs. 4–5). although some inconsistencies are unresolved. The plans have been
fitted to the building shapes shown on Lacy's plan
of 1673 (Plate 3) which are to some extent confirmed by later surveys. All the houses contained
a basement having vaulted cellars below the portico
walk. There were four main storeys, the first and
third evidently loftier than the others, and garrets
were provided in the roof.
The 'upper' house, leased to Edward Sydenham, was the largest of the three, having a
frontage of 52 feet to the portico walk, and a wide
north front facing an extensive garden. In the
basement was a large kitchen, lit by two iron
casements. It contained two ovens of Reigate
stone, and a pipe and cock for water. There was a
larder under the great stairs, a little larder, a pastry
lit by one casement, and a wash-house with water
laid on. The wine and beer cellars were probably
below the portico walk. On the ground or hall
floor, a 'pair of double doors' opened from the
portico walk into the hall, a room having two
iron casements and a door leading to the great
stairs, which were contained in a compartment
having a door to the back yard. Another door
opened to a passage and thence to a buttery. The
principal ground-floor room was the parlour, its
walls 'all wainscotted', which must have faced
north with three iron casements and a 'Balcony
doore' to the garden. From the parlour one door
opened to the study, and another to the inner hall.
The closet, evidently on the west side of the
parlour, had four iron casements, three on the
north side and one on the south. Its walls were
'wainscotted about the windowes and the Peeres
… And likewise the Jambes and over the heade
of the doore', and the walls were 'Crested with
wainscott aboute for the hangings'. The inner
hall, similarly finished, had a wainscot chimneypiece, two casements, and a door to the back stairs.
Nearby was a little store and a small room paved
with tiles, having one casement.
The second storey, or mezzanine, began with
a 'little' room on the left of the great stairs, having
two iron casements with shutters, and wainscoting
about the windows and chimneypiece, the walls
being ledged for hangings. On the right of the
great stairs was an outer room, finished like the
last, and having a chimneypiece, one window,
an outer door towards the great stairs, and a door
towards the back stairs. This outer room served
a suite extending across the north front, with
windows overlooking the garden. First came an
inner room with a chimneypiece, two casements,
and a balcony door opening to a balustraded
'Purgula'. On the left (west) was another 'Inner
Roome' with three casements, and on the right
(east) a chamber, with three casements, a chimneypiece, and a door from the back stairs. All the
rooms of this suite were finished with wainscot
about the piers, windows, doorways and chimneypieces, the walls being ledged for hangings. An
inner chamber, very simply finished, had an iron
casement on the back stairs and a 'sydeboorde' for
the window.
The best rooms were in the third storey, a
piano nobile extending above the portico walk.
On the left of the great stairs was a room wainscoted about the two casements, piers and chimneypiece, and ledged for hangings. At the head of the
great stairs, a two-leaved door opened to the
dining-room, where two windows of two leaves
overlooked the Piazza. This room was wainscoted about the windows, doors and chimneypiece, and the walls were 'double Crested for
hangings'. The withdrawing-room, similarly
finished, had a chimney, and at the north end
were two casements and a 'Balcony door' opening
to a recessed loggia, furnished with 19½ feet 'of
greater Rayle and ballister' and finished with 19½
feet 'of Cartouse Cornish'. Materials were prepared for a similar feature at the east end of the
north front, but not used. For the rest of the third
storey, the arrangement of that below appears to
have been repeated, with a room on the right of
the great stairs, a lodging chamber within,
another lodging within the last, a closet, and an
inner chamber. All of these rooms, except the
inner chamber, were handsomely finished with
wainscoting, the walls being crested or ledged for
hangings.
There were three rooms on the west side of the
fourth storey, the middle one being entered from
the great stairs through a 'Wainscott Portall' or
lobby. This room contained two cupboards, and
had one window to the Piazza and doors to rooms
on the north and south. The inner room to the
south had one window to the Piazza. The north
room, described as the 'Lodginge upon the same
Range towards the Garden', had a chimneypiece,
two casements, an outer door towards the great
stairs, and an adjacent closet with one casement.
The rooms facing east and north were again
similar in size, sequence, and finish to those of the
lower storeys. There were five garrets in the roof,
on the north end of which was a platform covered
with lead.
Robert Linton, the joiner employed to finish
the interior of Edward Sydenham's house, charged
2s. 7d. per yard for 951½ yards of wainscot 'in the
severall roomes about the windowes shutting
windowes frices Chimney peeces, and Portalls'.
For the great staircase of ninety-one steps 'with
Ravles and ballisters', one of the three made for
these houses, Richard Vesey charged 3s. 4d. the
step, and for the back stairs 3s. the step.
In addition to the piped water within the house,
there was a well in the back yard, where the inventory lists a leaden pump and a house of office.
The stable and coach-house were beyond the
garden, fronting Hart Street.
The 'middle' and 'lower' houses, leased by the
fourth Earl to Sir Edmund Verney, were treated
as one in the inventory attached to the lease,
although it is clear that they were designed and
originally built as separate houses of almost identical plan and accommodation, having frontages of
42 feet and 49 feet, respectively. In the basement,
the inventory lists a beer cellar, strong-beer cellar,
scullery, kitchen, pastry (by stair foot door),
larder and wash-house, although the mason's
account states that Reigate stone was supplied for
one oven in the middle house and one oven in the
lower house next Russell Street.
At the south end of the ground or hall storey
was a study, wainscoted and having two windows
to Russell Street and a door to the first staircase
compartment, which was entered from the portico
walk through a double door. North of the first
stair was a hall or passage, wainscoted 5 feet
9 inches high, with two casements and a door to an
'entryinge roome for servants', presumably a
servants' hall linked by stairs with the basement.
Next to the entering room was the servants'
dining-room, with three casements. A door at the
north end of the hall opened to the second staircase, originally intended to serve the middle house.
North of this stair was a buttery and store-house.
At the south end of the second storey, or mezzanine, was a room with two casements to Russell
Street and a door to the first stairs. Wainscot was
used for the chimneypiece and about the windows,
the walls being ledged with deal for the hangings.
North of the first stairs was a passage, the room by
it having one casement and a chimneypiece,
wainscoted. Adjoining was a closet, made with a
wainscot partition, having one casement. An
inner room, next to the second stairs, had two
casements finished like the chimneypiece with
wainscot. On the right (north) of the second
stairs was a room with two casements and a
chimney, finished with wainscot which was also
used to partition off a closet.
The rooms in the third storey, above 'the
Mezato corner', were listed from south to north
in two sequences, east and west. The east
sequence begins with a room having two casements to Russell Street and a door to the first stairs,
and containing a closet 'parted with tymber'. The
chimneypiece and windows were wainscoted and
the walls were 'double crested' for hangings. A
little dining-room, north of the first stairs, had two
windows and a chimneypiece, finished with wainscot. The next room 'which cometh to the 2nd
Staires' was generally similar to the last but had a
closet formed with a wainscot partition. On the
right (north) of the second stairs was a room with
two casements and a chimneypiece, finished with
wainscot. The west sequence began with the
dining-room next Russell Street, with two of its
three two-leaved windows overlooking the Piazza.
Here the windows, the double door to the first
stairs, and the chimney with its returns, were
wainscoted and the walls were double crested or
'Cornished' for hangings. The next room north
was the withdrawing-room, where the finishings
were similar to those of the dining-room, and one
two-leaved window looked into the Piazza. In
the middle house, north of the withdrawing-room,
were two rooms linked by a large closet, probably
the arrangement originally intended for both
houses. Each room had a two-leaved window
and a chimneypiece, and was finished in the same
handsome manner as the dining-room. The closet
had a two-leaved window with wainscoted jambs,
head, sills and under-sill.
Figure 4, 5:
Conjectural plans of the houses in the Piazza built by the fourth Earl of Bedford. Based on the inventories attached
to the leases granted in 1634 to Edward Sydenham and Sir Edmund Verney, and on the building accounts
In the fourth storey, the east rooms on either
side of the two staircases were basically similar to
those below, the middle pair alone having
closets parted with wainscot. The rooms in the
west front sequence formed two groups, consistent with the original arrangement of the two
houses. Each group consisted of an inner room,
at the head of the stairs, and a room on either side.
The inner rooms were without fireplaces and all
had one window, except for the southernmost
room where a second window overlooked Russell
Street. The roof contained six garrets.
In the yard was a pump, with shed, houses of
office, stables, an outer yard, and two coachhouses with chambers for the grooms.
The building accountsafford further information
on the general construction and finishing of
these houses. The bricklayer, John Taylor, dug
and made the drains and 'downeright Sinks' in the
back yards, and made drains below the cellars and
kitchens, the great drains from the latter being
carried under the portico walk into the common
sewer. Eaves-gutters of lead were provided by the
plumbers, who also made a gutter through the
garret towards Russell Street, a middle gutter to
the second (Verney) house, and installed three
pipes to convey rainwater from the roofs to the
cellars, probably into storage tanks.
The bricklayer lathed and plastered the wings
of the dormer windows, and the eaves soffit, and
plastered the brickwork between the 'Cantelivers'
or modillions, all of which work was painted. The
walls of the houses varied in thickness from four to
one and a half bricks, and the party walls above
the portico walks were supported by oak truss
partitions. The walls of the two-storeyed
stables were generally one and a half bricks in
thickness.
Working in the three houses, Richard Vesey,
the carpenter, provided three two-leaved doors
from the staircases to the dining-rooms, seventeen
architrave doorcases with doors, and twenty-five
plain doorcases with doors. Frames were supplied for 420 plain window lights, and besides
special items such as the balcony windows and
balcony door in Edward Sydenham's house, there
were frames for the nine windows 'standing in the
stoneworke'. These were the tall mullionedand-transomed 'Italian' windows of the principal
storey, each containing two large and two small
lights with iron casements, fitted with 'shutting
windows' of wainscot, and furnished by the smith
with rods, spring bolts and staples. Two kitchens
were furnished with a dresser and a great stool
to chop meat on.
The houses of office appear to have had two
floors, the lower one containing the privies, for
which four doors were supplied.
The various leaseholders were responsible for
building the north side's two ranges of portico
houses, and the east side's south range, the last
becoming known as the Little Piazza. However
much these houses may have differed in frontage,
plan and internal finish, they all conformed with
the fa¸ade design established by the north-east
range, and the body of each house had the standard
depth of two rooms in its upper storeys. Beginning
at the west end of the north side, the first house
fronted 60 feet and embraced four bays of the
arcade. According to Lacy's plan it had no back
wing on either side of its extensive garden.
Fronting 30 feet 6 inches, the second house occupied two bays and its back wing was on the west
side. The third house, fronting 45 feet, and the
fourth house, fronting 49 feet 2 inches, were each
three bays wide. Neither had a back wing because of the staggered lines of their garden plots,
but the fourth house had the advantage of a return
front to James Street. The fifth house, also with
a return front to James Street, fronted only 18
feet 8 inches to the Piazza, and was one bay wide.
The sixth house, fronting 39 feet 5 inches, was
three bays wide and had a back wing on the east
side. The seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth houses,
respectively 28 feet 10 inches, 30 feet 3 inches,
29 feet 7 inches, and 29 feet 5 inches wide, had
each a two-bay front to the Piazza. Lacy's plan
suggests that these four houses were planned in
similar mirrored pairs, each house having a back
wing with a closet extension, those of the middle
houses adjoining. In the Little Piazza each house
was two bays wide, the southern pair sharing a
frontage of 62 feet 6 inches and having mirrored
plans, with extensive back wings built to face each
other across the garden wall.
The South Side
Except for the houses at each end, the south side
of the Piazza was open to the raised terrace-walk
of the Bedford House garden, its long front wall
broken at equal intervals by two semi-circular
bastions projecting into the Piazza. Various
pictorial sources show that at each end of the
terrace there stood a domed pavilion of octangular
plan, its angle faces concave and its cardinal faces
dressed with pedimented frontispieces. If this
terrace and its pavilions, or banqueting houses,
were to be ascribed to any one, it would be Isaac
de Caus rather than Inigo Jones.
While no view includes the east end of the
south side, the house at the west end, built in 1631
for Sir Humphrey Foster, appears, on the evidence
of a mezzotint of 1690 (Plate 46a), to have had a
front three windows wide and three storeys high,
each dressed with an order, the composition being
crowned with a semi-circular pediment-gable
rising against the steeply pitched roof. Although
such a front is quite typical of its time, it could
have had no place in Jones's well-ordered scheme
for the Piazza.