Somerset House, Park Lane
Somerset House (built 1769–70;
. It was also known as 40 Park Lane, although a renumbering means that the site is now called 140 Park Lane.The
Lord Bateman, 1769–1789
The house was built between 1769 and 1770 for
The new house was built with one side facing Park Lane, the main entrance being from a courtyard which continued the line of Hereford Street. It had four
At the northern end of the courtyard, where it met Oxford Street, there was a stable building, and under it with the kitchen, connected to the house by an underground passage from basement to basement.[1]
Bateman agreed to pay Phillips £7,000 for the work to complete the house.[1]
Warren Hastings, 1789–1797
In 1789 Bateman sold the house to Warren Hastings, a former Governor-General of India, for about £8,000, of which half was paid at once, with Hastings moving in during November 1789. This was shortly after he had been impeached, and he used the house as his London home throughout several years of a long trial which led to his acquittal in 1795. In 1797 he sold the house at auction, when it was bought by the third Earl of Rosebery for £9,450. Rosebery was offered the pictures on the walls but declined them, and Hastings later noted in his diary that they were "sold at Christie's for nothing".[1][2]
Lord Rosebery, 1797–1808
Little is known of Lord Rosebery's eleven years of occupation. In 1808 the house was sold to the eleventh Duke of Somerset (1775–1855), when it was described as "a very good one".[1][3]
Dukes of Somerset, 1808–1885
The 11th Duke renamed the house "Somerset House", which Sir John Colville later called "a shade presumptuous of him, for there was another more splendid establishment bearing the name..."[4] The house thus became the third 'Somerset House' in London.[5]
The Duke negotiated unsuccessfully with his neighbour
In 1813 the Duke wrote to his brother, Lord Webb John Seymour (1777–1819), about his wife: "Charlotte is as busy as a bee upon a bank of thyme. Furnishing her house has been one occupation, and she has the fashionable predilection for old things".[6] In 1819 the Duke again thought of building on his garden, and after negotiations with Grenville and Grosvenor a short two-storey extension close to the windows of the library at Camelford House was built, and in 1821 or 1822 a single-storey entrance corridor was added on the north side.[1]
The Duke's first duchess died at Somerset House in 1827, and he himself died there in 1855. After that, his second wife remained at the house until she died in 1880. The
The 12th Duke used the address "40, Park Lane".
The Murray Smiths, 1890–1915
George Murray Smith, born in 1824, occupied the house, which became known as 40, Park Lane, until he died in 1901.[9] The lease continued in his family until 1915,[8] his widow remaining living there until May 1914, but in 1906, negotiations began for the redevelopment of the Somerset House site together with Camelford House.[10] The 2nd Duke of Westminster, as freeholder, was uneasy about allowing the two demolitions, "having regard to No. 40 having historical associations", but in the end he agreed to the scheme. Camelford House was demolished in 1913.[11] When Mrs Murray Smith left she claimed that the house possessed "vaults with chains in them", including a cell said to have been used for prisoners being taken to Tyburn, but when this was investigated by the Grosvenor estate surveyor, Edmund Wimperis, he found nothing of the kind.[1][12]
Demolition
In 1901, a writer in
When Somerset House was demolished, four of its
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 'Park Lane', in Survey of London: volume 40: The Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, Part 2 (The Buildings) (1980), pp. 264–289, accessed 15 November 2010
- ^ British Library Add. MSS. 39881–3
- ^ Lady Guendolen Ramsden, Correspondence of Two Brothers (1906), p. 75
- ^ John Rupert Colville, Strange inheritance (Michael Russell, 1983), p. 19 (snippet)
- ^ Oliver Bradbury, The Lost Mansions of Mayfair (Historical Publications, 2008), p. 127
- ^ Ramsden, p. 109
- ^ Lady Guendolen Ramsden, ed., Letters, Remains and Memoirs of Edward Adolphus Seymour, Twelfth Duke of Somerset (1893; facsimile edn. by Kessinger Publishing, 2004), p. 531
- ^ a b Notes & Queries, vol. 133 (1916), p. 318 (snippet)
- ^ "George Murray Smith (1824–1901)". oxforddnb.com. Retrieved 14 November 2010.
- ^ Grosvenor Board Minutes, 46 volumes, 1789–c. 1920, in Grosvenor Office, vol. 33, pp. 181–182, 527–528
- ^ Grosvenor Board Minutes, vol. 37, pp. 411–412; vol. 40, pp. 185–186
- ^ Grosvenor Board Minutes, vol. 41, pp. 495–6
- ^ The Architectural Review, vol. IX (1901), pp. 42–43
- ^ Grosvenor Board Minutes, vol. 41, pp. 510 & 540