Essex House (London)
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51°30′48″N 0°6′43″W / 51.51333°N 0.11194°W Essex House was a house that fronted the Strand in London. Originally called Leicester House, it was built around 1575 for Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and was renamed Essex House after being inherited by his stepson, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, after Leicester's death in 1588. The poet Philip Sidney lived in Leicester House for some time.
The property occupied the site where the Outer Temple, part of the London headquarters of the Knights Templar, had previously stood, and was immediately adjacent to the Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court.[1] The house was substantial; in 1590, it was recorded as having 42 bedrooms, plus a picture gallery, kitchens, outhouses, a banqueting suite and a chapel.
Essex’s mother, Lettice Knollys, leased out the house for a while, but she moved in later with her new husband, Sir Christopher Blount, as well as her son and his family. After the executions of Blount and Essex in 1601, she continued to live there until her death, leasing part of the house to James Hay, the first Earl of Carlisle. Hay hosted a lavish banquet for the French ambassador in 1621 at Essex House involving sweetmeats costing £500 and ambergris used in cooking costing £300, and the total bill was £3,300.[2]
The house then became the property of
The main part of the house was demolished some time between 1674 and 1679. Essex Street was built on part of the site. One of those buildings was used in the mid-1770s as a
The house (briefly) hosted the famous
References
- ^ Peter Dawkins. The Shakespeare Enigma.
- ^ Lawrence Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy (Oxford, 1965), p. 561.
- ^ Chapter 1, The History of Essex Hall by Mortimer Rowe B.A., D.D. Lindsey Press, 1959 Archived 2012-03-26 at the Wayback Machine
Further reading
- Borer, Mary Cathcart. The City of London: A History. (NY McKay, 1977) (pp 156)
- Holmes, Martin. Elizabethan London. (London: Cassell, 1969) (pp 90–91)
- Stow, John. A Survey of London. Reprinted from the Text of 1603. Ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford. 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1908) pp 2:393-4