Fig. 118.—SOUTH OR PRINCIPAL FRONT OF ALBEMARLE HOUSE, LONDON, 1664.
From an Engraving by R. Sawyer, Jun.
Lord Chancellor Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, built a fine house during the heyday of his prosperity, on a site in Piccadilly, opposite the top of St James’s Street (Fig. [118]). It was highly extolled by Evelyn (especially when writing to Lord Cornbury, the chancellor’s eldest son), and after him by Pepys, who went to see it, “hearing so much from Mr. Evelyn of it.” He declared it to be the finest pile he ever did see, and on a subsequent visit he climbed with some trouble to the top, and there found the noblest prospect that ever he saw, Greenwich being nothing to it. The engraving hardly bears out this extravagant praise, but it must have been a stately house. The architect was Roger Pratt, afterwards knighted, another of the men whom the great fire appears to have brought into the service of architecture.[58] Evelyn mentions him more than once; he was a fellow commissioner of his in the inquiry as to the rebuilding of St Paul’s, and Evelyn had met him years before in Italy. The house was begun in 1664, and was approaching completion in November 1666. But misfortune dogged it from the outset. The populace, with whom Clarendon was no favourite, dubbed it Dunkirk House, in allusion to his supposed connection with the sale of that town to the French. The chancellor occupied it but a single year before he fled the country; his son occupied it for another year or two, and it was then let on lease to the Duke of Ormond. After Clarendon’s death at the end of 1674, it was sold to the second Duke of Albemarle, and became known as Albemarle House; he again sold it some three years later to a kind of building syndicate, who in a few years pulled it down and laid out its site and the surrounding land in streets, one of which was called Albemarle Street, and another Bond Street, after Sir Thomas Bond who was one of the principals concerned in the transaction. The house was regarded as an unwarrantable extravagance, and Clarendon himself is reported to have eventually looked upon the building of it as a “vanity and folly.” But after all it only cost £50,000, which was a small sum compared with the cost of many houses both before and since. It is interesting because of its short life—less than twenty years from foundation to demolition—and from the character of the design, which follows the lines laid down by Jones and Webb.
Fig. 119.—Staircase of a House between Love Lane and Botolph Lane, London (demolished in 1906).
Apart from the large houses which were built for wealthy persons, the new London which sprang up after the fire must have been widely different from the old. The houses which were burnt down were, many of them, built of wood and plaster—relics of mediæval times. Their fronts leaned across narrow lanes, each story projecting over the one beneath it, after such a fashion as may still be seen, though ever less frequently, in some of our ancient country towns. The houses which replaced them followed in most cases the old frontage lines, but their fronts were vertical and admitted as much light and air as the width of the street allowed. Nevertheless, the width was frequently but little, and houses of great size and finely treated within, were built in streets and lanes which in the present day we should regard as mere alleys, and which, indeed, would not be permitted under any modern by-laws. London still preserves many of these old houses (Fig. [117]), although they are gradually being improved away. They are generally built of brick, with very little relief to their fronts save a good doorway and a good cornice, and perhaps a few touches in some ironwork. The same general treatment prevailed for half a century or more, with a tendency, however, to even greater simplicity; the result was that, although in the city where the narrow lanes were crooked and had here and there unexpected projections, the effect was interesting, yet where the same plain treatment was applied to long straight streets, the effect became dull and monotonous. Most of these houses had interesting detail within them, many of them were actually sumptuous, and of a richness suitable to the merchant princes who dwelt there. They had fine staircases and ceilings like those in a house in Botolph Lane (Figs. [119], [120]), and good doorways and panelling like that in a house in College Hill (Fig. [121]).
Fig. 120.—Ceiling in a House between Love and Botolph Lanes.
