Tavistock Street
Of the present Tavistock Street only the western
half, from Wellington Street to Southampton
Street, represents the street laid out under that
name on the site of Bedford Ground in the early
eighteenth century. The eastern half is the former
York Street and its extension (see pages 48, 196).
In 1937 both parts of York Street were renamed
Tavistock Street and the entire street was renumbered.
The street was laid out for building between
December 1706 and March 1713/14 under the
Bedford leases tabulated on pages 316–21, except
for No. 24, which was built and paid for by the
second Duke. A few of the houses were in
occupation by 1709 but the street was not filled
up until 1715. (ref. 16) There is no contemporary
picture of Tavistock Street and as none of the
original houses have survived their appearance
must be judged from what is known about the
buildings elsewhere on Bedford Ground (see
pages 38–9). They were all almost certainly
four storeys high but varied in width from 17
to over 30 feet. One of the last to be demolished was a large house on the south side,
which was occupied by Sir John Cotton in 1716 (ref. 16)
(No. 5 on fig. 32). Although this house was not
rebuilt before 1912 it had evidently been refaced
and a handsome shop front of an early nineteenthcentury character inserted into the ground floor
(Plate 59b).
As with the other streets on Bedford Ground
the early inhabitants were mostly respectable
tradesmen. Mortimer's Universal Director for
1763 listed seven inhabitants of whom six were
mercers or milliners, including Bingley and Bragg,
linen drapers to the King. Writing in 1835
Thomas Walker recalled that 'Tavistock Street,
Covent Garden, was once the street of fashionable
shops—what Bond Street was till lately, and what
Bond Street and Regent Street together are
now.' (ref. 79)
From c. 1709 there was a tavern called the
Salutation on the west corner of Tavistock Court
(No. 31 on fig. 32), which survived until 1881, (ref. 80)
and on the opposite side of the street in a house
called the Harlequin and Pierot (No. 2–3 on fig.
32) was the coffee house kept between 1714 and
1736 by Richard Leveridge, the singer and
composer. (ref. 81)
An increasing number of complaints to the
parish committee of management in the early
nineteenth century points to a decline in the
social character of the street and this impression is
supported by a report from the sixth Duke's
agent in 1829 that the inhabitants of the street
were mostly very poor. (ref. 82) In 1837 the parish
surveyor of pavements reported to the committee
that on market mornings the streets surrounding
the market were blocked up and that the inhabitants of Tavistock Street had complained
'that there was so much noise from the heavy
carts, and their drivers, from one a. m. that sleep
was impossible in the front rooms'. (ref. 83)
By 1885 all the houses on the north side of the
street had been demolished to make room for the
continually expanding market. (ref. 84) The south side
of the street was largely rebuilt during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Tavistock Court
This was the name given to a footway from
Tavistock Street into the Piazza which was laid
out in 1706–7 immediately to the west of the old
east wall of Bedford House garden (see fig. 32).
Originally there were seven houses in the court,
including the four corner houses—three on the
east side, which were demolished in 1859–60,
and four on the west side, which were demolished
in 1884–5. (ref. 85)
Inhabitants of Tavistock Street and Court include: Dr. John Hays, 1709–13; Captain William
Hewet, 1709–10; Richard Leveridge, 1714–
1736, singer and composer; Dr. Robert Welsted,
1714–35, physician; Sir John Cotton, 1716;
Sir Thomas Wheatt, 1717; Lady Ross, 1718;
Colonel Henry Skelton, 1718–23; Barton Booth,
1720, actor; Lady Fermanagh, 1720; Colonel
George Treby, 1721–8; Boyle Godfrey, 1731–
1753, alchemist; Dr. Philipson, 1732–3; Hannah
Glasse, c. 1748–55, writer on cookery; George
Carter, 1779–85, painter; Thomas Hardy,
1795–7, radical politician; Thomas Dodd, 1800–
1806, auctioneer and printseller; Antoine Claudet,
1828, photographer; Thomas Gaspey, 1831–3,
novelist and journalist.
Nos. 2–10 (even) Tavistock
Street: Country Life
On 8 January 1897 appeared the first number
of a weekly magazine called Country Life Illustrated, in succession to Racing Illustrated. Its
creator was Edward Hudson, a director of the
printing firm of Hudson and Kearns of Southwark, in collaboration with Sir George Newnes,
whose publishing offices were in Southampton
Street. The new magazine was printed in Southwark and published from Southampton Street,
but the editorial offices were on part of the present
site, then Nos. 20–21 Tavistock Street. (ref. 86) The
new weekly (its name shortened to Country Life
from 1901) was well received, and in 1903 Sir
George Newnes arranged to take a building lease
of the site of Nos. 17–21 (consec.) Tavistock
Street from the eleventh Duke of Bedford. (ref. 87)
Here new offices were erected for the editing,
printing and publishing of the magazine by
Country Life Limited, a company (formed in
1905) with Hudson as chairman and William
Hudson and Sir George and Frank Newnes as
co-directors. (ref. 86)
Edward Hudson, as well as being founder and
part-owner of Country Life, was deeply interested
and involved in all aspects of its development, and
it was the architect whose career Hudson delighted to further who was commissioned to
design the new offices. A recent article in Country
Life has observed that the sympathetic 'presentation' in its pages of each new major work by Sir
Edwin Lutyens was founded in Hudson's admiring wish to foster his friend's fame: but 'while
Hudson loved to do so, it also seems to have been
understood that Lutyens should design Hudson's
own commissions for love too'. (ref. 88)
At Deanery Garden, Sonning, Lutyens had
just created for Hudson an attractive example of
his freely composed eclecticism, but in Tavistock
Street Lutyens had his first commission for a
monumental design in London; and working in a
more classical vein he produced here one of the
earliest examples of his 'Wrenaissance' manner.
In April 1904 Lutyens submitted his design,
on behalf of Sir George Newnes, to the London
County Council for its consent to a small encroachment on the footway. Lutyens wished the
building line to be thus set forward to permit his
main cornice to be returned against the adjacent
building eastward without 'mutilation', but consent was refused. An amended application was
submitted in May, and in June the Westminster
City Council recommended the London County
Council again to refuse consent. In July Lutyens
appealed to W. E. Riley, the London County
Council's Superintending Architect. He claimed
to have been obliged 'practically to redesign' the
entrance—'I fear to its detriment'. Now he had
learnt that a committee of the Westminster City
Council had ruled that the application must go
before yet another committee, and wrote to Riley:
'It is rather cruel this careless indifference on the
part of the City of Westminster and a very serious
matter for my client. Could you advise me what
to do. I could easily get questions asked in the
House of Commons or Lords—and make the
"devils own" fuss. Should I write a strong protest
to the Council of the C. of W. Your advice
would be invaluable. . . .' A few days later the
London County Council, having been informed
that the Westminster City Council had changed
its mind, gave conditional approval to Lutyens's
amended application, and formal consent followed
in September. (ref. 89)
It would seem, on the evidence of a letter and
sketch printed by Mr. Hussey in his Life of
Lutyens, that the architect was still working on
his design early in 1905. Lutyens describes his
difficulties in getting the height of the chimney
stacks right: "I funk the chimneys", he said
(February 4, 1905) "and they are going up up up
and they look enormous, like two campaniles
perched on my big roof and if I reduce the
height a—b it throws the proportion c-d all out
and wrong-looking. I am nerving myself to some
decision on Monday"'. (ref. 90)
The building was completed in that year and
an eighty-year lease (from Christmas 1903) was
granted by the Duke of Bedford to Country Life
Limited in 1906. (ref. 91)
The Tavistock Street front, four storeys high
and seven windows wide, is built of fine narrowcoursed red brick above a ground-storey face of
Portland stone, this material also being used for
the window dressings and crowning cornice
(Plate 72a). The windows are grouped in threes
to flank the imposing 'frontispiece' of the entrance
and the emphasized windows above. Channel
joints course the ground-storey face, returning
into the reveals and dividing the voussoirs of the
straight heads to the windows. These have tall
keystones, each differently carved with a pendant
of flowers, birds and fishes, below a scrolled cartouche bearing the cypher C L. The 'frontispiece', a large-scaled variant of the conventional
early-Georgian pedimented doorcase, frames the
round-arched doorway, its moulded archivolt
rising from cornice-imposts above panelled jambs.
The doorway is recessed between tall plainshafted Composite pilasters, projecting from
flanking half-pilasters. These support entablature-blocks which are united by the cornice of an
almost semi-circular pediment, its open tympanum
containing the middle window of the second
(mezzanine) storey. The pilaster capitals are
linked by a frieze carved with wreaths and festoons of flowers, palms and husks; the archivolt
keystone is carved with a small scrolled cartouche;
and the pediment cornice is conventionally enriched with carved mouldings. The two-leaved
door and radial fanlight demonstrate Lutyens's
love of geometrical patterns.
The three second-storey windows on either
side of the 'frontispiece' pediment are set in small
openings of straight-sided oval form, each being
framed by a moulded architrave lugged top and
bottom at the sides and broken by a small keystone carved with a human head. These windows
are linked below to the plain bandcourse and
blocking of stone, finishing the ground storey,
and above to the pedestal-aprons of the thirdstorey windows, the plain bases and moulded sills
of which are linked across the brick face by plain
stone bands. The tall window-openings are
dressed alike with a boldly moulded architrave,
plain frieze and cornice, the middle window
alone being enriched with foliated scrolls flanking
the architrave, and a triangular pediment resting
on richly carved scroll-trusses. The square
windows of the fourth storey are completely
framed with moulded architraves, that of the
middle window being lugged at each angle. The
brick face is handsomely finished with a bold
cornice of stone, richly moulded but uncarved.
This was originally surmounted by a high parapet
of brick, its plain surface broken only by two
narrow openings centred above the third window
from either end. The pantiled roof, its swept
eaves slightly oversailing the parapet, was originally hipped at both ends and broken only by the
two monumental chimney-stacks, their brick
shafts resembling grouped pilasters, rising from
stone-dressed pedestals and finishing with stone
cornices.
The building in 1935 of Tower House next
door resulted in the loss of the hitherto exposed
west wall, with its cornice and parapet, and the
hipped return of the roof, thereby depriving the
building of its original effect of design in depth so
carefully contrived by Lutyens. In 1956–7 his
original conception was further impaired by the
insertion of windows in the attic parapet, by
Robert Lutyens and Greenwood, who reconstructed the roof and inserted an extra floor. It
remains to add that, except for the ground storey,
most of the windows retain their original smallpaned sashes.<Country Life vacated the building, c.1975. Five dormer windows, based on Lutyens' work at Temple Dinsley, Herts., were inserted in the front roof c.1978. Since then the building has been converted to a modern business centre and re-christened Hudson House.>
The entrance hall, although small in scale, is
monumental in its design, with a cross-vaulted
ceiling, and pedimented doorcases in the side
walls (Plate 72b). A Doric screen opens to the
staircase, which rises round a lift-shaft and has a
double tier of turned and twisted balusters, moulded handrail and brass ball-finials to the newels.
The first half-landing forms a small balustraded
gallery overlooking the entrance hall. The plan
is limited by the unusual shallowness of the site
and the rooms are arranged on each side of a
central corridor. The suite of five interconnecting editorial rooms on the second floor is of
double-storey height, lit by the tall piano nobile
windows (which, like all the windows, have
thick glazing-bars of late seventeenth-century
pattern). These rooms (Plate 73) have coved
ceilings, doorways with full entablatures and tall
overmantels with moulded panels. Several of the
chimneypieces have simple bolection-moulded
surrounds of the Wren period and others are
based on later eighteenth-century models with
mantel shelves and plain tablets. Some of the
furniture designed by Lutyens for the building
is still in use, notably two glass-fronted bookcases
and a set of wheel-backed chairs.
At the same time as the Country Life building
(in 1904) Lutyens also designed for George
Newnes Limited the large double-fronted bracket
clock projecting from No.3 Southampton Street,
which forms an agreeably conspicuous feature of
the view from the Strand (fig. 39). Its faces
originally bore the twelve letters of GEORGE
NEWNES in place of hour-numerals. (ref. 92) The
pedimented clock-case of Baroque design is
carved in dark wood. It is supported on a timber
beam, treated as an entablature with a pulvinated
frieze, breaking into a segmental curve below the
clock, with a fretted pendant below containing
cherubs' heads facing each way. The border of
the clock-case on each face is carved with garlands
and flowers, with shells in the corners. The
moulded surround rises from scrolls, which are
supported on the backs of tortoises standing on
the beam. The upper corners are eared and
shouldered while between them the frame is
swept up into the tympanum with concave sides
and flat top. Above the ears small triglyph-like
corbels support the base mouldings of the pediment, the upper mouldings of which are formed
by two curved members finishing in scrolls linked
by garlands to an urn in the centre. The pierced
tympanum has fretted carving in the lower part
and contains a double-faced scrolled cartouche,
supporting the urn and standing on the upswept
clock-case frame.
Figure 39:
Clock designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens at No. 3 Southampton Street
No. 22 Tavistock Street
Formerly the offices of Strand District Board of Works
This building on the east corner with Burleigh
Street is dated 1857 and was erected to the
designs of the surveyor to the Board, G. F. Fry,
after a building committee had decided not to
employ an outside architect. The contractor
was W. T. Purkiss, whose tender was accepted
at £3,472. The Board took an eighty-year
building lease from the seventh Duke of Bedford
in January 1858. (ref. 93)