Many of Britain's great noblemen maintained large London houses that bore their names. As a ducal house (only in mainland Europe were such houses referred to as palaces), Devonshire House was one of the largest and grandest, ranking alongside Burlington House, Montague House, Lansdowne House, Londonderry House, Northumberland House, and Norfolk House. All of these have long been demolished, except Burlington and Lansdowne, both of which have been substantially altered.
Today the site is occupied by a namesake modern office building.
Berkeley House, a classical mansion built by Hugh May, having been purchased in 1696 by William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, was renamed "Devonshire House". As part of the agreement, John Berkeley, 3rd Baron Berkeley of Stratton (c. 1663–1697) undertook not to build on that part of the land he retained which lay directly behind the house to the north, so preserving the Duke's view. This covenant was still in force when the Berkeley land was developed after 1730, and the gardens of Berkeley Square represent the northern termination of that undeveloped strip, combined in the south with the gardens of Lansdowne House.[1]
During the 18th century forms of entertainment began to change and large receptions came into fashion, often taking the form of concerts and balls. Initially, hosts hired one of the many new assembly rooms built to indulge the fashion. It was not long before the more dedicated and wealthy hosts began to add a ballroom to their town houses; the more wealthy still forsook their old-fashionedly proportioned town houses in favour of new and vast palaces designed purely for entertaining. The Duke of Devonshire, an owner of vast estates in Derbyshire and elsewhere, belonged to the latter category.[3] Thus the fire at Devonshire House in 1733 provided the unforeseen opportunity to build one such palace during the height of the fashion.
The 3rd Duke chose the fashionable architect William Kent, for whom this was a first commission for a London house. It was built between 1734 and about 1740.[4] Kent was the protégé of the immensely cultivated 3rd Earl of Burlington and had worked on his Chiswick House, built in 1729, and also at Holkham Hall, completed circa 1741, both in the Palladian style and considered the epitome of fashion and sophistication. Chiswick House later came, with other estates, into the possession of the Dukes of Devonshire through the marriage of the 4th Duke to Lady Charlotte Boyle, daughter and heiress of Lord Burlington.[5]
In typical Palladian style, Devonshire House consisted of a corps de logis flanked by service wings. The severity of the design - three storeys in eleven bays - caused one contemporary critic to liken the mansion to a warehouse,[6] and a modern biographer of Kent to remark on its "plain severity".[7] However, the curiously flat exterior concealed Kent's sumptuous interiors which housed a large part of the Devonshire art collection, considered one of the finest in the United Kingdom,[8] and a renowned library,[9] housed in a room 40ft long and including amongst its treasures Claude Lorraine's Liber Veritatis, his record in sketches of a lifetime of painting. In the Duke's sitting room a glass case over the chimneypiece contained the best of his collection of engraved gems and Renaissance and Baroque medallions.[10] Such a prominent commission could hardly fail to be included in Vitruvius Britannicus.[11]
The plan of Devonshire House defines it as one of the earliest of the great 18th-century town houses, then designed identically to grand country houses. Its purpose, too, was identical, to display wealth and consequently power. Thus a great town house, by its large size and design, accentuated its owner's power by its contrast with the monotony of the smaller terraced houses surrounding it.[12]
At Devonshire House, Kent's exterior stairs led up to a piano nobile, where the entrance hall was the only room that rose through two storeys.[13] Inconspicuous pairs of staircases are tucked into modest sites at either side, for the upstairs was strictly private. Enfilades of interconnecting rooms, of which the largest space is devoted to the library, flank central halls, adjusting the traditions of the symmetrical Baroque state apartments, a design which did not lend itself to large gatherings. A few years later architects such as Matthew Brettingham pioneered a more compact design, with a suite of connecting reception rooms circling a central top-lit stair hall, which allowed guests to "circulate". Greeted at the head of the stairs, they then flowed in a convenient circuit, rather than retracing their steps. This design was first exemplified by the now-demolished Norfolk House completed in 1756.[14] Therefore, it seems that Devonshire House was old-fashioned and unsuited to its intended use almost from the moment of its completion. Thus from the late 18th century its interiors were vastly altered.
Alterations were made to Devonshire House by the architect James Wyatt, over the long period 1776–90,[15] and later by Decimus Burton, who in 1843 constructed a new portico, entrance hall and grand staircase for the 6th Duke.[16] At that time the external double staircase was swept away, allowing for formal entrance to be made into the ground floor through the new portico. Hitherto the ground floor had contained only secondary rooms and in 18th century fashion had been the domain of servants.
The new staircase conveyed guests directly to the piano nobile, from a low entrance hall, in a newly created recess formed by creating a convex bow at the centre of the rear garden facade.[17] Known as the "Crystal Staircase", it had a glass handrail and newel posts.[18] Burton amalgamated several of the principal rooms; he created a vast heavily gilded ballroom from two former drawing rooms and often created double height rooms at the expense of the bedrooms above, causing the house to become even more of a place for display and entertaining rather than for living.
Devonshire House, entrance front on Piccadilly, in 1906.
During World War I Devonshire House was used by the Red Cross, including for dealing with post. Gertrude Bacon was later in charge of this operation,[21] and Rotha Lintorn-Orman served as its commandant, which put her in charge of training all ambulance drivers for the British Red Cross.[22]
After the war, many aristocratic families gave up their London houses and Devonshire House was deserted in 1919.[23] The demolition was mentioned nostalgically several times in literature and caused Virginia Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway to think, as she passed down Piccadilly, of "Devonshire House without its gilt leopards", a reference to the house's gilded gates.[24] It also inspired Siegfried Sassoon's "Monody on the Demolition of Devonshire House".[25]
The reason for the abandonment was that the 9th Duke was the first of his family to suffer death duties, which amounted to over £500,000 (£18 million).[26] Additionally, he inherited the debts of the 7th Duke. This double burden prompted the sale of many of the family's valuables, including books printed by William Caxton, many 1st editions of Shakespeare,[27] and Devonshire House itself with its even more valuable three acres of gardens.
The sale was finalised in 1920 at a price of £750,000 (equivalent to £27,038,808 in 2023) [25][28] and the house was demolished.[29] The two purchasers were Shurmer Sibthorpe and Lawrence Harrison, wealthy industrialists, who built on the site a hotel and block of flats. When told that the proposed demolition was an act of vandalism, Sibthorpe, echoing the building's 18th-century critics, replied: "Archaeologists have gathered round me and say I am a vandal, but personally I think the place is an eyesore."[30]
Legacy
Gates from Devonshire House reused for the entrance to Green Park on the south side of Piccadilly, a few yards away from their original position
In 1924-1926 Holland, Hannen & Cubitts built a new office building on the site, fronting directly onto Piccadilly, also known as "Devonshire House".[31] The building became the UK headquarters of the automobile manufacturer Citroën, with showrooms occupying the lower three floors. Citroën remained the chief occupant of the building until 1936. It was also the headquarters of The Rootes Group until the 1960s. During World War II it was occupied by the headquarters of the War Damage Commission.
Some of the paintings and furniture from Devonshire House survive at the Duke's principal seat, Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. The wrought-iron entrance gates, between piers with rusticatedquoins and topped with seated sphinxes, have been re-erected on the south side of Piccadilly, to form an entrance to Green Park. The wine cellar is now the ticket office of Green Park Underground station. Other architectural salvage included furniture, doorways and mantelpieces which were relocated to Chatsworth. Some of these stored items were auctioned by Sotheby's on 5–7 October 2010,[32] including five William Kent chimneypieces from Devonshire House described by the auctioneer Lord Dalmeny as being of special interest and value: "You can't buy them because they are all in listed buildings now. It's like being able to commission Rubens to paint your ceiling."[33]
Most of the great detached houses of noblemen which existed in the West End of London, where even the grandest persons often lived in terraced houses, including Devonshire House, Norfolk House and Chesterfield House, are today numbered amongst England's thousands of lost houses; Lansdowne House lost its front to a street-widening scheme. Just a few survive, but in corporate or state ownership. Marlborough House passed to the crown in the 19th century. Apsley House remains a functioning possession of the Dukes of Wellington, but is mostly now a public museum on the edge of a busy roundabout, its gardens long gone (but not built over), with the family occupying the uppermost floor only. Spencer House is an event venue. Manchester House houses the Wallace Collection, a museum open to the public. Bridgewater House, Westminster by Charles Barry is now used as offices. Currently, Dudley House is the only one of London's surviving private palaces to be occupied and used as its design intended.[34]
Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork, was a British architect and noble often called the "Apollo of the Arts" and the "Architect Earl". The son of the 2nd Earl of Burlington and 3rd Earl of Cork, Burlington never took more than a passing interest in politics despite his position as a Privy Counsellor and a member of both the British House of Lords and the Irish House of Lords. His great interests in life were architecture and landscaping, and he is remembered for being a builder and a patron of architects, craftsmen and landscapers, Indeed, he is credited with bringing Palladian architecture to Britain and Ireland. His major projects include Burlington House, Westminster School, Chiswick House and Northwick Park.
Chatsworth House is a stately home in the Derbyshire Dales, 4 miles (6.4 km) north-east of Bakewell and 9 miles (14 km) west of Chesterfield, England. The seat of the Duke of Devonshire, it has belonged to the Cavendish family since 1549. It stands on the east bank of the River Derwent, across from hills between the Derwent and Wye valleys, amid parkland backed by wooded hills that rise to heather moorland.
Duke of Devonshire is a title in the Peerage of England held by members of the Cavendish family. This branch of the Cavendish family has been one of the wealthiest British aristocratic families since the 16th century and has been rivalled in political influence perhaps only by the marquesses of Salisbury and the earls of Derby.
Deborah Vivien Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, was an English aristocrat, writer, memoirist, and socialite. She was the youngest and last-surviving of the six Mitford sisters, who were prominent members of British society in the 1930s and 1940s.
William Kent was an English architect, landscape architect, painter and furniture designer of the early 18th century. He began his career as a painter, and became Principal Painter in Ordinary or court painter, but his real talent was for design in various media.
William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire, was a British nobleman and Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1721 to 1729 when he inherited the Dukedom.
William George Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire,, styled Marquess of Hartington until 1811, was an English peer, courtier and Whig politician. Known as the "Bachelor Duke", he served as Lord Chamberlain from 1827 to 1828 and again from 1830 to 1834. The Cavendish banana is named after him.
Berkeley Square is a garden square in the West End of London. It is one of the best known of the many squares in London, located in Mayfair in the City of Westminster. It was laid out in the mid 18th century by the architect William Kent, and originally extended further south. The garden's very large London Plane trees are among the oldest in central London, planted in 1789.
Lansdowne House now 9 Fitzmaurice Place is the remaining part of an aristocratic English town house building to the south of Berkeley Square in central London, England. The initial name was for two decades Shelburne House, then its title matched its owning family's elevation to a higher peerage in 1784. In the mid to late 19th century, it was frequently let, as a whole, to families of very high wealth or income, such as Lord Rosebery and Hannah de Rothschild of Mentmore Towers from 1878 to 1890. Some of its 18th-century interiors, among the best in London, were taken elsewhere. It was at different times leased by three 19th century British prime ministers, and William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor of Cliveden House, widely believed to be the richest man in America at the time of his tenancy (1891–1893) and also by Harry Gordon Selfridge in the 1920s. Landsdowne's heirs sold the property in 1929, two years after the death of the 5th Marquess, a prominent government frontbencher.
Decimus Burton was one of the foremost English architects and landscapers of the 19th century. He was the foremost Victorian architect in the Roman revival, Greek revival, Georgian neoclassical and Regency styles. He was a founding fellow and vice-president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and from 1840 architect to the Royal Botanic Society, and an early member of the Athenaeum Club, London, whose clubhouse he designed and which the company of his father, James Burton, the pre-eminent Georgian London property developer, built.
Peregrine Andrew Morny Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire,, is an English peer. He is the only surviving son of Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire, and his wife, the former Deborah Mitford. He succeeded to the dukedom following the death of his father on 3 May 2004. Before his succession, he was styled Earl of Burlington from 1944 until 1950 and Marquess of Hartington between 1950 and 2004. His immediate family are owner-occupiers of Chatsworth House with an estimated net worth of £910 million, and own large estates in Derbyshire, North Yorkshire and Ireland.
Burlington House is a building on Piccadilly in Mayfair, London. It was originally a private English Baroque and then Neo-Palladian mansion owned by the Earls of Burlington. It was significantly expanded in the mid-19th century after being purchased by the British government. Today, the Royal Academy and five learned societies occupy much of the building.
Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire is an architecturally significant country house from the Elizabethan era, a leading example of the Elizabethan prodigy house. Built between 1590 and 1597 for Bess of Hardwick, it was designed by the architect Robert Smythson, an exponent of the Renaissance style. Hardwick Hall is one of the earliest examples of the English interpretation of this style, which came into fashion having slowly spread from Florence. Its arrival in Britain coincided with the period when it was no longer necessary or legal to fortify a domestic dwelling.
Evelyn Emily Mary Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire,, was the wife of Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire. She was the elder daughter of politician and diplomat Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, and grew up amidst public life. Evelyn's marriage to Cavendish, nephew and heir presumptive of Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, led to her becoming Duchess of Devonshire in 1908. With her position, she oversaw the reorganisation of the Devonshire estates and presided over four English houses and one Irish castle.
The Devonshire Arms is a moderately common name for an English pub. The name is for the Dukes of Devonshire, members of the peerage from a wealthy aristocratic family.
The Cavendishfamily is a British noble family, of Anglo-Norman origins. They rose to their highest prominence as Duke of Devonshire and Duke of Newcastle.
In British usage, the term townhouse originally referred to the opulent town or city residence of a member of the nobility or gentry, as opposed to their country seat, generally known as a country house or, colloquially, for the larger ones, stately home. The grandest of the London townhouses were stand-alone buildings, but many were terraced buildings.
Dorothy Bentinck, Duchess of Portland was Duchess of Portland and the wife of William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Dorothy Boyle, Countess of Burlington and Countess of Cork was a British noble and court official, as well as a caricaturist and portrait painter. Several of her studies and paintings were made of her daughters. Through her daughter Charlotte, who married the 4th Duke of Devonshire. A collection of 24 of her works of art descended to the Duke of Devonshire and kept at Chatsworth House.
Catherine Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, was the wife of William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire, and mother of the 4th Duke.
References
↑ 'Berkeley Square, North Side,' in Survey of London: Volume 40, the Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, Part 2 (The Buildings), ed. F H W Sheppard (London: London County Council, 1980), 64-67, accessed 21 November 2015, online
↑ Howard ColvinA Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, 3rd ed. 1995, s.v. "Kent, William".
↑ Chatsworth, p52. "The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire". Derbyshire Countryside Ltd. 2005
↑ E. Beresford Chancellor, The Private Palaces of London. Chapter E: "It is spacious, and so are the East India Company's Warehouses."
↑ Michael I. Wilson, William Kent, Architect, Designer, Painter, Gardener, 1685—1748 1984:172, who adds "the fact that the house was hidden from public gaze behind a high wall must have helped still further to give it the appearance of a penitentiary"
↑ Its nucleus, hung in the earlier house on the site, was noted by Pierre-Jacques Fougeroux, a copy of whose manuscript Voyage survives in the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum; Francis Russell, "Early Italian Pictures and Some English Collectors", The Burlington Magazine136 No. 1091 (February 1994;85-90) notes fashionable Tintorettos and Veroneses and Raphaels and some less-expected quattrocento paintings including a so-called Bellini.
↑ B. Lambert, The History and Survey of London and its Environs, 1806:529.
↑ Noted in a brief notice in The Crayon, 1.12 (21 March 1855:184).
↑ Tait A. A. ‘Adam, Robert (1728–1792)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2009 accessed 4 Oct 2010
↑ The great height of the grander saloons pictured in The Illustrated London News was effected in the extensive restructuring under Decimus Burton by taking into the public spaces former upstairs accommodations, making of Devonshire House even more a site purely for public receptions and gallery display.
↑ A light modern memoir of the ball, written by the daughter of the 11th duke and duchess, is Sophia Murphy, The Duchess of Devonshire's Ball, 1984. See also some images of guests in costume here: http://www.rvondeh.dircon.co.uk/incalmprose/index.html
↑ Noted by Fiske Kimball, in describing interiors from Lansdowne House re-erected in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, "Lansdowne House Redivivus". The Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, 1943.
↑ Virginia Woolf, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street", 1923.
1 2 Richard Davenport-Hines, "Cavendish, Victor Christian William, ninth Duke of Devonshire (1868–1938)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009 accessed 4 Oct 2010.
↑ A complete list (see Townhouse (Great Britain)) would also include Melbourne House, remodelled as The Albany; Dover House in Whitehall, now government offices; Derby House in Stratford Place off Oxford Street; Crewe House,in Curzon Street; Bourdon House at the northeast end of Berkeley Square; Egremont House, Piccadilly, housing the Naval and Military Club; and Bath House. These are mentioned by Nikolaus Pevsner, London I: The Cities of London and Westminster (Buildings of England series) 1962. 78f.
Bibliography
Trease, George (1975). London. London: Thames & Hudson. p.161.
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