Bagford [1650–1716], writing somewhat later, says:[[208]] “He [Inigo Jones] built Queen Street, also designed at first for a square, and as reported at ye charge of ye Jesuits; in ye middle whereof was left a niche for ye statue of Henrietta Maria, and this was ye first uniform street and ye houses are stately and magnificent.... These buildings were ye designes of ye Ld. Arundell, who was ye first that introduced brick building into England (I mean for private houses).”
That some architect was commissioned by Newton to design the façade, and possibly the principal internal features, is most probable; but the above evidence is unfortunately not sufficient to enable him to be identified.
Hollar’s careful engraving (Plate 3) shows the long straight roof of the road frontage, but the rear elevations show that the roofs were varied for individual houses and were treated with gables. Whoever was the designer of the façade to Great Queen Street, he was probably employed by Newton as architect for the houses built on the west side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields three years afterwards. These show a distinct advance in design, being treated as a single symmetrical composition, with a central feature composed of three houses of increased height, the side wings being of equal lengths.[[209]]
The beautiful drawings by J. W. Archer[[210]] reproduced on Plate 16 exemplify the similarity of the two designs to a very marked degree, the only important difference in detail being that in Great Queen Street the Corinthian order was employed, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields the Ionic.
A description of the exterior of the only remaining fragment of the Great Queen Street houses, Nos. 55 and 56, will suffice for the whole. The front is constructed mostly of brick, the ground storey having originally formed a simple base for the Corinthian order of pilasters. These embrace the height of the first and second stories, the bases and capitals being of stone, the ornament of the latter boldly carved, and the volutes and abacus spreading to an unusual extent. (Plates 18 and 19.)
The pilasters were ornamented, if, as seems probable, it is to these houses that Gerbier referred when, writing about 25 years after their erection, he criticised certain “incongruities” perpetrated by those pretending knowledge in ornaments “by placing between windows pilasters through whose bodies lions are represented to creep; as those in Queen Street without any necessity, or ground for the placing lions so ill.”[[211]] These lions were probably of stucco, and affixed to the pilasters in a position similar to that of the ornaments of the Tudor rose and fleur de lis on the houses in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and those at the eastern end of the north side of Great Queen Street.[[212]] Walpole,[[213]] writing in 1763, continued the ridicule of these offending ornaments, but by 1783 they must have been removed, for the engraving by Bottomley of the Freemasons’ Tavern (Plate 22) does not show them, nor can they now be traced on the brickwork of the pilasters.
Between the first and second floor windows is introduced a slightly projecting ornamental device in brickwork, of somewhat Jacobean character, which on the façade of the houses in Lincoln’s Inn Fields was represented by a band, formerly seen at No. 2, Portsmouth Street. The same feature is also shown in the Wilton House picture of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.[[214]]
Above the capitals the entablature has been much restored, and its former beauty correspondingly diminished. The architrave appears to have been of wood, with three fascias (Plate 19), and crowning this is the bed mould of the cornice, which has large wooden modillions, shaped and enriched with acanthus leaves.
The modillions support a cyma and fascia with panelled soffit, the cyma forming the front of a leaden gutter.
Surmounting the cornice was the high pitched roof, shown by Hollar, with hipped dormer windows, of one and two lights alternating. Though none of them retain the whole of their original construction, the two on the right of the illustration may possibly be in their original form.