Manor House, 21 Soho Square is a Grade II listed building in the West End of London. It has 17th-century origins but the existing structure dates from 1838. It was originally built in 1678 as a townhouse but through its history has also been a notorious brothel, the headquarters of Crosse & Blackwell and is now an office building.
In 1678 a lease was granted on a plot in Soho Square to John Dunton by Richard Frith (who laid out the rest of the Square in 1681) and William Pym. Dunton built two houses on the site which were later converted into a single dwelling with the address of 21 Soho Square. [1] For the next 90 years the house was lived in by a succession of prominent figures including from 1685, James Grahme, and then briefly in 1691 by his brother Richard Graham, Viscount Preston. [1]
Between 1730 and 1734, Manor House was the home of Sir Rowland Winn 4th Bart of Nostell Priory, Yorkshire. During Winn's tenure George Vertue recorded that a "large family picture of Sir Thomas More" was hung there, this was a copy by Rowland Lockey of the painting (now lost) by Hans Holbein and had been commissioned by the More family in 1592. When Winn left Manor House the painting went to Nostell Priory where it remains. [1] Between 1772 and 1775 21 Soho Square was the location of the Spanish Embassy. [1]
In 1776 the house, known then as The White House, was bought by Thomas Hopper, who, between 1778 and 1801 styled it as an hotel although all contemporary accounts point to its real business being as a high-class magical brothel. [2] The White House is described as being garishly decorated and had lavish themed rooms including the "Gold Room", "Silver Room" and "Bronze Room", a "Painted Chamber", "Grotto", "Coal Hole" and most famously the "Skeleton Room" which contained a mechanised human skeleton designed to scare the staff and patrons alike. [1] Henry Mayhew called the White House a "notorious place of ill-fame" [2] and wrote:
Some of the apartments, it is said, were furnished in a style of costly luxury; while others were fitted up with springs, traps, and other contrivances, so as to present no appearance other than that of an ordinary room, until the machinery was set in motion. In one room, into which some wretched girl might be introduced, on her drawing a curtain as she would be desired, a skeleton, grinning horribly, was precipitated forward, and caught the terrified creature in his, to all appearance, bony arms. In another chamber the lights grew dim, and then seemed gradually to go out. In a little time some candles, apparently self-ignited, revealed to a horror stricken woman, a black coffin, on the lid of which might be seen, in brass letters, ANNE, or whatever name it had been ascertained the poor wretch was known by. A sofa, in another part of the mansion was made to descend into some place of utter darkness; or, it was alleged, into a room in which was a store of soot or ashes. [3]
In 1838 the house was acquired by Edmund Crosse and Thomas Blackwell of the condiment firm Crosse & Blackwell. They embarked on the first and only major rebuilding/remodelling of the original structure and created the house which we see today of four main storeys of yellow stock brick with a four-window wide façade fronting Soho Square; the front door was previously on Sutton Row as shown in an 1826 watercolour by T. Richardson. They also added a "painted cornice below the third storey and a shallower entablature and blocking above screening the slated mansard roof" as well as cast iron balconies to the first and second floors. Crosse and Blackwell operated their business from the house until 1925 and it is probable that the ground floor had some kind of shop front. Crosse and Blackwell's structure is the house we see today but for the addition of a Portland stone façade to the ground floor by the architect M. W. Watts in 1927–1928. [1]
When Stephen Tallents' film unit was transferred from the Empire Marketing Board to the General Post Office Public Relations Department in 1933, it moved from Oxford Street to 21 Soho Square where it remained for many years under its new name the GPO Film Unit and from where many of its most famous productions were conceived. [4]
Manor House, 21 Soho Square is still in use as an office building. Its most recent leaseholders include Stoll Moss Theatres, Really Useful Theatres and See Tickets. Its current use is as a WeWork space. [5]
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
Robert Adam was a British neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam (1689–1748), Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him. With his older brother John, Robert took on the family business, which included lucrative work for the Board of Ordnance, after William's death.
Thomas Chippendale (1718–1779) was a cabinet-maker in London, designing furniture in the mid-Georgian, English Rococo, and Neoclassical styles. In 1754 he published a book of his designs in a trade catalogue titled The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director—the most important collection of furniture designs published in England to that point which created a mass market for furniture—upon which success he became renowned. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, "so influential were his designs, in Britain and throughout Europe and America, that 'Chippendale' became a shorthand description for any furniture similar to his Director designs".
Soho Square is a garden square in Soho, London, hosting since 1954 a de facto public park let by the Soho Square Garden Committee to Westminster City Council. It was originally called King Square after Charles II, and a much weathered statue of the monarch has stood in the square, with an extended interruption, since 1661, one year after the restoration of the monarchy.
Crosse & Blackwell is a British food brand. The original company was established in London in 1706, then was acquired by Edmund Crosse and Thomas Blackwell in 1830. It became independent until it was acquired by Swiss conglomerate Nestlé in 1960.
James Paine (1717–1789) was an English architect.
Nostell Priory is a Palladian house in Nostell, West Yorkshire, England, near Crofton on the road to Doncaster from Wakefield. It dates from 1733, and was built for the Winn family on the site of a medieval priory. The Priory and its contents were given to the National Trust in 1953 by the trustees of the estate and Rowland Winn, 3rd Baron St Oswald.
Lord Headley, Baron Allanson and Winn, of Aghadoe in the County of Kerry, was a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1797 for Sir George Allanson-Winn, 1st Baronet, a former Baron of the Court of the Exchequer and Member of Parliament for Ripon. He had already been created a Baronet, of Little Warley in the County of Essex, in the Baronetage of Great Britain on 14 September 1776. His son, Charles Winn-Allanson, 2nd Baron Headley, represented Ripon, Malton and Ludgershall in Parliament. In 1833 he succeeded a distant relative as 8th Baronet, of Nostel. His nephew, the third Baron, sat in the House of Lords as an Irish Representative Peer from 1868 to 1877. His son, the fourth Baron, was an Irish Representative Peer from 1883 to 1913. His cousin, Rowland Allanson-Winn, 5th Baron Headley, was a prominent convert to Islam. On the death in 1994 of the latter's younger son, Charles Allanson-Winn, 7th Baron Headley, the titles became extinct.
Grim's Dyke is a house and estate in Harrow Weald, in northwest London, England. The house was built from 1870 to 1872 by Richard Norman Shaw for painter Frederick Goodall and named after the nearby prehistoric earthwork known as Grim's Ditch. It was converted into a hotel, Grim's Dyke Hotel, in 1970.
Rowland Winn, 1st Baron St Oswald was an English industrialist and Conservative Party politician.
The Priory Church of St Mary and St Hardulph is the Church of England parish church of Breedon on the Hill, Leicestershire, England. The church has also been known as Breedon Priory and as the Holy Hill Monastery.
Robert Lewis Roumieu otherwise R.L. Roumieu, was a 19th-century English architect whose designs include Milner Square in Islington and an idiosyncratic vinegar warehouse at 33–35 Eastcheap in the City of London. A pupil of Benjamin Dean Wyatt, he worked in partnership with Alexander Dick Gough between 1836 and 1848.
The Castle at Castle Eden, County Durham, England, is an 18th-century, Palladian style, mansion house and a Grade II* listed building. No trace remains of the medieval castle of Robert the Bruce.
George Allanson-Winn, 1st Baron Headley, known as Sir George Allanson-Winn, Bt, between 1776 and 1797, was a British barrister, judge and politician.
Hirst Priory is an 18th-century country house and grounds in Belton on the Isle of Axholme, North Lincolnshire, United Kingdom. The current building was built upon the site of a 12th-century Augustinian priory.
Fauconberg House was a house in Soho Square in the City of Westminster, London. It was demolished in 1924.
The statue of Charles II is an outdoor sculpture of Charles II of England by the Danish sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber, located near the centre of Soho Square in London. Once part of a late 17th century fountain, it was removed in the late 19th century to a private estate in Harrow before being restored to the square in the mid-20th century. It depicts the king in a standing pose on top of a low decorated pedestal. Although it has been the subject of restoration works, it is heavily eroded and in a poor condition.
Sir Thomas More and Family is a lost painting by Hans Holbein the Younger, painted circa 1527 and known from a number of surviving copies.
Hitchin Priory in Hitchin in Hertfordshire is today a hotel built in about 1700 on the site of a Carmelite friary founded in 1317, which was closed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the reign of Henry VIII. Parts of the original priory are incorporated in the existing building, which has been a Grade I listed building on the Register of Historic England since 1951.
John Deval (1701–1774) was an 18th-century British sculptor and Master Mason, as was his namesake son (1728–1794). He was Chief Mason to the Crown and was the mason for the Tower of London and Royal Mews.