Londonderry House
51°30′20″N 0°9′1″W / 51.50556°N 0.15028°W
Londonderry House was an aristocratic townhouse situated on Park Lane in the Mayfair district of London, England.[1] The mansion served as the London residence of the Marquesses of Londonderry. It remained their home until 1962. In that year Londonderry House was sold by the Trustees of the 7th Marquess of Londonderry's Will Trusts to a developer who built the "Londonderry Hotel" on the site, not (as is sometimes, erroneously, stated) the Hilton. The Hilton Hotel is on the other side of the street, and had already been opened. COMO Metropolitan London now occupies the site of Londonderry House.[2]
History
Holderness House, later Londonderry House, was designed by
The residence was purchased in 1819 by the
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (later Napoleon III) often visited Londonderry House while exiled in London in 1836-40 and 1846–48.[4]
During World War I, the house was used as a military hospital. After the war, Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, and his wife, Edith Helen Chaplin, continued to use the house and entertained extensively.[1] After World War II, the house remained in the possession of the 7th Marquess of Londonderry with the Royal Aero Club leasing most of Londonderry House, though the family retained twenty two rooms for their own use. Following the death of the 7th Marquess in 1949, his widow Edith continued in occupation by permission of the Trustees of her late husband's Will, until her death in 1959.
The Londonderry age on Park Lane drew to a close after the death of Edith, Dowager Marchioness of Londonderry. The last social events hosted by the family in Londonderry House were the debutante balls of Hon Elizabeth Keppel in 1959
Description
The tragedy of the sale of Londonderry House was not the comparatively meagre price (by current standards) it fetched for the Londonderry family, but the fact that this magnificent mansion was then immediately, apart from its stableyard (which still stands, with its separate entrance in Brick Street still surmounted by the coronet of a Marquess), completely demolished. The bland exterior of Londonderry House concealed, for example, the aforementioned magnificently painted, and fresco-ceiling interiors by James "Athenian" Stuart who had, coincidentally, built the Temple of the Winds at the Londonderry's Ulster seat of Mount Stewart. The main stairway was meant to outdo that of
On from that was the Dining Room, which held the Londonderry collection of silver. Another elegant room was the tripartite Drawing Room, which held more Londonderry Silver, French furniture, Old Master paintings (for example "The Madonna and Child with a male Donor, a landscape beyond", painted by Giovanni Bellini, which was sold by Lady Mairi Bury in 1977, to provide a capital sum endowment for the National Trust to become involved with the care of Mount Stewart), and ceilings painted with birds.[1]
See also
Sources and further reading
- ^ a b c d e "Londonderry House". Lost Britain. Retrieved 15 December 2018.
- ^ Singh, Anita (30 March 2014). "Sale of the century as aristocrats auction heirlooms". Daily Telegraph.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/26708. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ "Abd-el-Kader, his Champion, and his Gaoler". The Spectator. 14 August 1852. p. 8. Retrieved 19 July 2018.
Once upon a time Holdernesse House was a welcome and splendid asylum ...
- ^ Source reference 5: See Durham County Record Office Catalogue reference entry D/X 2183 "Records Relating to Hon Elizabeth Keppel" : D/X 2183/1 "Thank you letters sent to Lady Mairi Bury from guests who attended a ball at Londonderry House, London, to celebrate Elizabeth's 18th birthday, 23 October-2 November 1959"]
- De Courcy, Anne. Society's Queen: The Life of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry. London: Phoenix, 2004. ISBN 1-85619-363-2)
- Sykes, Christopher Simon. Private Palaces: Life in the Great London Houses. New York, Viking Penguin Inc 1986. ISBN 0-670-80964-0.