Tavistock Row
Tavistock Row was the name given in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to all the houses on
the south side of the Piazza between the east
corner and Southampton Street. It consisted of
two groups of houses separated by a passage from
the Piazza into Tavistock Street called Tavistock
Court. The houses to the east of Tavistock Court
(Nos. 1–3) were built during the original seventeenth-century development of the Piazza and
are described on page 94. Those to the west
(Nos. 4–14) were built between 1706 and 1714
on the site of Bedford House garden under the
leases tabulated on pages 314–17.
The houses built in the early eighteenth century were not required to match the Jonesian
style of the old portico buildings on the north and
east sides of the Piazza. They were not even uniform in appearance, for the later houses had to
comply with the regulations contained in the two
London Building Acts of 1707 and 1708 which
were passed between the granting of the first and
last leases (see page 39). The effect of these Acts
on the appearance of the houses in Tavistock
Row can be clearly seen in Collett's painting of
the Piazza (Plate 29b). The houses shown here
belonged to two basic types. All were four storeys
high originally, but the earlier buildings can be
recognized by the flat arches of the windows, and
the wooden eaves-cornice, sometimes surmounted
by a later brick parapet and in one house by a
Chinese fret railing of wood. The later buildings
were conspicuous for having windows with
segmental arches and prominent triple keystones,
and their fronts were carried up to form plain
stone-coped parapets. Except for the casements
in the fourth-storey windows of the houses
flanking Southampton Street, the windows are
shown furnished with sashes in exposed boxes.
By the early nineteenth century most of the
houses in Tavistock Row had been converted
into shops (Plate 35a). All of them were demolished in 1884–5 to make more room for the
market. (ref. 94)
From at least 1720 there was a tavern at No. 10
called the Queen's Head, later known as the
Stag. (ref. 95)
Ratepaying inhabitants of Tavistock Row,
most of them artists or actors, include: Richard
Escourt, 1708–12, actor and dramatist; John
Vander Vaart, 1711–26, painter and mezzotint
engraver; Christian Frederick Zincke, 1715–48,
enamel painter; Samuel Scott, c. 1736–47, marine
and landscape painter; Richard Wilson, 1748–50,
landscape painter; Richard Yeo, 1749–58,
medallist; Jeremiah Meyer, 1759–85, miniature
painter; Nathaniel Dance, later Sir Nathaniel
Dance Holland, 1770–82, painter; William Bigg,
1783–91, painter; Thomas Major, 1784–99,
engraver; Charles Macklin, actor, who lived at
No. 6 from 1788 to 1797; (fn. *) Mary Robinson,
1796–98, ? 'Perdita', actress, author and mistress
of George, Prince of Wales (George IV);
William Humphrey, 1798–1800, ? engraver and
printseller; John Henry Johnstone, 1807–28,
actor and vocalist.
Non-ratepaying residents in Tavistock Row
include: James Deacon, c. 1749–50, watercolourist, miniature painter and wood-engraver; (ref. 96)
Samuel de Wilde, c. 1816, portrait painter. (ref. 97)
R. G. Coslett, c. 1818, miniaturist. (ref. 98)