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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Fifty years ago there appeared a book by the late Beresford Chancellor entitled The Private Palaces of London. In it he described with a facile but not altogether unscholarly pen those great mansions in which the English aristocracy still lived and entertained in a style as yet untroubled by surtax, death-duties and the economic difficulties created by two World Wars. Of the fifteen great town houses to each Of which he devoted a separate chapter less than half now survive, and none of them in private occupation. Apsley House is a museum, Bridgewater House shelters a great industrial organisation, and Spencer House does the same. Lancaster House alone can claim, as a centre of Government hospitality, to continue to fulfil ‘ those social-political functions for which it was long famous and for which it is undoubtedly the best of any surviving in the capital‘ What is more, its careful restoration by the Ministry of Works has given back to London a spectacular interior in the Louis XIV style which became suddenly fashionable during the latter years of George IV.
1. Hussey, Christopher in Country Life, 12 Nov., 1953, p. 1572.Google Scholar
2. Lothair (Bradenham edition), pp. 77–8.Google ScholarPubMed
3. Chancellor, Beresford, The Private Palaces of London (1908), pp. 349–50Google Scholar; Wheatley, and Cunningham, , London Past & Present iii (1891), p. 298 Google Scholar; The Duke of Sutherland, The Story of Stafford House (1935), p. 11.Google Scholar
4. Brief, pp. 116-118.
5. For Wyatt's work at Belvoir see Christopher Hussey in Country Life, 6-27 Dec, 1956.
6. Diary and Correspondence of Charles Abbot, Lord Chancellor, iii (1861), p. 438.Google Scholar An acquaintance of the Duke’s told him that ‘ It was originally planned as a moderate house by Smirke, and actually begun on that scale, when the Duchess of Rutland interfered, changed the whole to its present vast size, and put it into the hands of Wyatt. Its computed cost when completed is not less than £120,000’.
7. This date, recorded bv the Duke’s official biographer, throws some doubt on the accuracy of Wyatt’s statement that he was first appointed in July, 1825.
8. Watkins., J. Biographical Memoir of Frederick Duke of York (1827), pp. 230–1Google Scholar, 529.
9. Brief, p. 118.
10. Brief, pp. 120-1.
11. Brief, pp. 126-7.
12. Brief, p. 131.
13. At Maresfield Park, where he had already designed a new library for Sir John Shelley.
14. Brief, p. 137.
15. Brief, p. 151.
16. For details of these transactions see the pamphlet entitled Debts of His Royal Highness the Duke of York published by his creditors in 1832.
17. The story that the Marquess had himself advanced large sums to the Duke to pay for the building of York House appears to be without foundation.
18. Brief, p. 288; cf. Three Howard Sisters, ed. Leconfield, Lady and Gore, John (1955), p. 81.Google Scholar
19. Britton, in his New View of London for 1827, stales that it is ‘nearly completed’, and this is borne out by statements in ,Wyatt’s brief.
20. Brief, p. 113
21. According to the otherwise well-informed article on Benjamin Wyatt in the Architectural Publication Society’s Dictionary, Smirke ‘ recommended Wyatt (then in the King’s Bench) to design the internal finishings of the chief apartments’. But Wyatt would scarcely have needed Smirke’s recommendation (even if it were forthcoming), and the records of the King’s Bench Prison in the Public Record Office make it clear that Wyatt was not in custody between 1833 and 1844.
22. Brief, p. 113.
23. Brief, p. 111.
24. Brief, pp. 203-4, slightly abbreviated.
25. Brief, pp. 189-90; see also p 65.
26. The Farington Diary, ed. Greig, J., vii, p. 252.Google Scholar
27. As a case in equity, the suit should have come before the Court of Chancery, but I have been unable to trace it either in the records of that Court, or in contemporary Law Reports. It must therefore remain doubtful whether the case was actually tried, and if so, with what result.
28. His son’s Memoir gives the date of Barry’s works at Trentham as 1838, but a paragraph in J. C. Loudon’s Architectural Magazine i (1834), p. 141, shows that Barry was engaged at Trentham as early as 1834.
29. Brief, p. 264.
30. Brief, p. 263.
31. Brief, pp. 273-280.
32. Hussey, Christopher in Country Life 12 Nov., 1953, p. 1574.Google Scholar According to the A.P.S. Dictionary, Barry’s alterations were effected in 1843. But the brief shows that he was already ‘meddling’ with the gallery in 1838, and The Times of 14 April, 1841, reported that ‘Stafford House is now nearly finished; the picture gallery is completed’. Work on the decoration of the staircase hall may, however, have continued until 1843.
33. On p. 190 he complains of the ‘excessive occupation of the time of the Clerks and Artists employed under me’ which his subordination to Smirke entailed.
34. Georgian London (1945), p. 236.Google ScholarPubMed
35. The Duke of Sutherland’s archives are the most likely source of further information about Stafford House. There are in fact some letters from both Smirke and Wyatt among the papers from the Estate Office at Trentham now in the Shropshire County Record Office (S.R.O. 673/5). Of these Miss M. C. Hill, the County Archivist, has very kindly provided me with transcripts. Unfortunately they throw no further light on the problems mentioned above.
