Spencer House in St James's, London, one of the last surviving true townhouses still owned by the noble family that built it, the Spencers, although it is now generally leased out commercially. The corresponding country house is Althorp in Northamptonshire.The Strand front of Northumberland House in 1752 by Canaletto, the townhouse of the Dukes of Northumberland. Note the "Percy Lion" atop the central facade.
In British usage, the term townhouse originally referred to the opulent town or city residence (in practice normally in Westminster near the seat of the monarch) 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.
British property developers and estate agents often market new buildings as townhouses, following the North American usage of the term, to aggrandise modest dwellings and to avoid the negative connotation of cheap terraced housing built in the Victorian era to accommodate workers. The aristocratic pedigree of terraced housing, for example as survives in St James's Square in Westminster, is widely forgotten. In concept, the aristocratic townhouse is comparable to the hôtel particulier, which notably housed the French nobleman in Paris, as well as to the urban domus of the nobiles of Ancient Rome.
Background
Historically, a town house (later townhouse) was the city residence of a noble or wealthy family, who would own one or more country houses, generally manor houses, in which they lived for much of the year and from the estates surrounding which they derived much of their wealth and political power. Many of the Inns of Court in London served this function; for example, Gray's Inn was the London townhouse of Reginald de Grey, 1st Baron Grey de Wilton (d. 1308). A dwelling in London, or in the provincial city of the county in which their country estate was located, was required for attendance on the royal court, attendance in Parliament, for the transaction of legal business and business in general. From the 18th century, landowners and their servants would move to a townhouse during the social season when balls and other society gatherings took place.[1]
From the 18th century, most townhouses were terraced; it was one of the successes of Georgian architecture to persuade the rich to buy terraced houses, especially if they were in a garden square. Only a small minority of them, generally the largest, were detached; even aristocrats whose country houses had grounds of hundreds or thousands of acres often lived in terraced houses in town. For example, the Duke of Norfolk was seated at Arundel Castle in the country, while from 1722 his London house, Norfolk House, was a terraced house in St James's Square, albeit one over 100 feet (30 metres) wide. Anciently the Dukes of Norfolk also had a townhouse, more properly a ducal palace, in the City of Norwich, the capital of the County of Norfolk, which was greatly enlarged by Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (d.1572), whose London townhouse was then the London Charterhouse just outside of the northern wall of the City of London, re-named "Howard House".[2]
England
London
1593 Norden's map of Westminster shows and names many grand London townhouses on the Strand: Yorke House, Durham House, Russell House, Savoy Palace, Somerset House, Arundel House, Leicester House, all downstream from Whitehall Palace. Lambeth Palace is marked as "Lambeth Howse".
In the Middle Ages, the London residences of the nobility were generally situated within the walls or boundary of the City of London, often known as "Inns", as the French equivalents are termed hôtel. For example, Lincoln's Inn was the town house of the Earl of Lincoln, and Gray's Inn of the Baron Grey de Wilton. At that time the Tower of London, within the City, was still in use as a royal palace. They gradually spread onto the Strand, the main ceremonial thoroughfare from the City to the Palace of Westminster, where parliamentary and court business were transacted. Areas such as Kensington and Hampstead were countryside hamlets outside London until the 19th century, so mansions in these areas, such as Holland House, cannot be considered as true historical townhouses. Bishops also had London residences, generally termed palaces, listed below.
The greatest residence on the Strand was the Savoy Palace, residence of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the richest man in the kingdom in his age and the father of King Henry IV. His chief seat was Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire. The Strand had the advantage of frontage to the River Thames, which gave the nobles their own private landing places, as had the royal palaces of Whitehall and Westminster and further out from the City Greenwich and Hampton Court. The next fashion was to move still further westwards to St James's, to be near the Tudor royal court. In the 18th century, Covent Garden was developed by the Duke of Bedford on his Bedford Estate, and Mayfair by the Grosvenor family on their Grosvenor Estate. The final fashion before the modern era was for a residence on the former marsh-land of Belgravia, on the southern part of the Grosvenor Estate, developed after the establishment of Mayfair by the Duke of Westminster. Many aristocratic townhouses were demolished or ceased to be used for residential purposes after the First World War, when the scarcity and greater expense of domestic servants made living on a grand scale impractical. The following examples, most of which are now demolished, are comparable to the Parisian hôtel particulier:
Whilst most English examples of the townhouse occur in London, provincial cities also contain some historical examples, for example Bampfylde House (destroyed in WW II) in Exeter, the county capital of Devon, the townhouse of Baron Poltimore of the Bampfylde family, whose main country seat was Poltimore House in Devon. Also in Exeter was Bedford House, also demolished, the town residence of the Duke of Bedford who resided principally at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire but required a base in the West Country from which to administer his vast estates there.
Powerscourt House - Dublin residence of Viscount Powerscourt, a prominent Irish peer. It was sensitively converted into an award-winning shopping centre in the 1980s. (See an image of one of its decorated ceilings here.)
↑ For a description of an 18th-century town house in England, for example, see Olsen, Kirsten. Daily Life in 18th-Century England. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999, pp. 84–85.
Also see Stewart, Rachel. The Town House in Georgian London. Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2009.
↑ Robinson, John Martin, The Dukes of Norfolk, A Quincentennial History, Oxford, 1982, p.56
Daisy, Countess of Fingall. Seventy Years Young. First published 1937 (autobiography of an Irish peer's wife, covering the late nineteenth and early twentieth century).
Mayfair is an area in London, England and is located in the City of Westminster. It is in Central London and part of the West End. It is between Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Park Lane and one of the most expensive districts in the world.
Georgian Dublin is a phrase used in terms of the history of Dublin that has two interwoven meanings:
to describe a historic period in the development of the city of Dublin, Ireland, from 1714 to the death in 1830 of King George IV. During this period, the reign of the four Georges, hence the word Georgian, covers a particular and unified style, derived from Palladian Architecture, which was used in erecting public and private buildings
to describe the modern day surviving buildings in Dublin erected in that period and which share that architectural style
Strand is a major thoroughfare in the City of Westminster, Central London. The street, which is part of London's West End theatreland, runs just over 3⁄4 mile (1.2 km) from Trafalgar Square eastwards to Temple Bar, where the road becomes Fleet Street in the City of London, and is part of the A4, a main road running west from inner London.
A townhouse, townhome, town house, or town home, is a type of terraced housing. A modern townhouse is often one with a small footprint on multiple floors. In a different British usage, the term originally referred to any type of city residence of someone whose main or largest residence was a country house.
Belgravia is a district in Central London, covering parts of the areas of the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
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.
St James's is a central district in the City of Westminster, London, forming part of the West End. The area was once part of the northwestern gardens and parks of St. James's Palace. During the Restoration in the 17th century, the area was developed as a residential location for the British aristocracy, and around the 19th century was the focus of the development of their gentlemen's clubs. Once part of the parish of St Martin in the Fields, much of it formed the parish of St James from 1685 to 1922. Since the Second World War the area has transitioned from residential to commercial use.
Grosvenor Square is a large garden square in the Mayfair district of Westminster, Greater London. It is the centrepiece of the Mayfair property of the Duke of Westminster, and takes its name from the duke's surname "Grosvenor". It was developed for fashionable residences in the 18th century. In the 20th it had an American and Canadian diplomatic presence, and currently is mixed use, commercial.
Grosvenor Group Limited is an internationally diversified property group, which traces its origins to 1677 and has its headquarters in London, England. It has a global reach, now in 62 international cities, with offices in 14 of them, operated on behalf of its owners, the Duke of Westminster and his family. It has four regional development and investment businesses and a portfolio of indirect investments. Its sectors include residential, office, retail, industrial, along with hotels.
Belgrave Square is a large 19th-century garden square in London. It is the centrepiece of Belgravia, and its architecture resembles the original scheme of property contractor Thomas Cubitt who engaged George Basevi for all of the terraces for the 2nd Earl Grosvenor, later the 1st Marquess of Westminster, in the 1820s. Most of the houses were occupied by 1840. The square takes its name from one of the Duke of Westminster's subsidiary titles, Viscount Belgrave. The village and former manor house of Belgrave, Cheshire, were among the rural landholdings associated with the main home and gardens of the senior branch of the family, Eaton Hall. Today, many embassies occupy buildings on all four sides.
Norfolk House was the London residence of the Dukes of Norfolk, and as such more than one building has been given this name. The first was opposite Lambeth Palace, set in acres of garden and orchards on a site occupying what is now the Novotel London Waterloo on Lambeth Road.
Devonshire House in Piccadilly, was the London townhouse of the Dukes of Devonshire during the 18th and 19th centuries. Following a fire in 1733 it was rebuilt by William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire, in the Palladian style, to designs by William Kent. Completed circa 1740, it stood empty after the First World War and was demolished in 1924.
London's architectural heritage involves many architectural styles from different historical periods. London's architectural eclecticism stems from its long history, continual redevelopment, destruction by the Great Fire of London and The Blitz, and state recognition of private property rights which have limited large-scale state planning. This sets London apart from other European capitals such as Paris and Rome which are more architecturally homogeneous. London's architecture ranges from the Romanesque central keep of The Tower of London, the great Gothic church of Westminster Abbey, the Palladian royal residence Queen's House, Christopher Wren's Baroque masterpiece St Paul's Cathedral, the High Victorian Gothic of The Palace of Westminster, the industrial Art Deco of Battersea Power Station, the post-war Modernism of The Barbican Estate and the Postmodern skyscraper 30 St Mary Axe 'The Gherkin'.
Detmar Jellings Blow was a British architect of the early 20th century, who designed principally in the arts and crafts style. His clients belonged chiefly to the British aristocracy, and later he became estates manager to the Duke of Westminster.
Cadogan Group Limited and its subsidiaries, including Cadogan Estates Limited, are British property investment and management companies that are owned by the Cadogan family, one of the richest families in the United Kingdom. They also hold the titles of Earl Cadogan and Viscount Chelsea, the latter used as a courtesy title by the Earl's eldest son. The Cadogan Group is the main landlord in the west London districts of Chelsea and Knightsbridge, and it is now the second largest of the surviving aristocratic Freehold Estates in Central London, after the Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor Estate, to which it is adjacent, covering Mayfair and Belgravia.
The Kingston House estate and Ennismore Gardens in Knightsbridge is a green, dual-character area within the western limits of the City of Westminster in London. The first-named is immediately south of Hyde Park, London taking up the park's semi-panorama row of 8 to 13 Princes Gate (demolished) and otherwise, as to more of its wings, set around the east of Princes Gate Garden including a terrace of houses №s 1 to 7 Bolney Gate. The second-named is a garden square of 59 tall creamy-white terraced houses and the approach road to Prince of Wales Gate, Hyde Park as well as the identical-size public, square green of the church that is since 1956 the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God and All Saints facing which green are its anomalous outlier row for a London garden square, №s 61 to 66. The relatively small, broad-fronted house set against the Consulate-used pairing at №s 61 to 62 is № 60 and as with the other 65 numbers of Ennismore Gardens is a listed building.
Dudley House is a Grade II* listed house with 44,000 square feet (4,100 m2) located at 100 Park Lane in the Mayfair area of London, England. It is one of the few surviving aristocratic townhouses in London. Dudley House is named after the Ward family, holders of the titles of Baron Ward, Viscount Dudley and Ward, and Earl of Dudley.
The following is a timeline of the history of London, the capital of England and the United Kingdom.
South Audley Street is a major shopping street in Mayfair, London. It runs north to south from the southwest corner of Grosvenor Square to Curzon Street.
This is a list of the etymology of street names in the London district of Holborn. Holborn has no formally defined boundaries - those utilised here are: Theobald’s Road to the north, Gray's Inn Road and the City of London boundary to the east, Victoria Embankment/the Thames to the south, and Lancaster Place, the north-west curve of the Aldwych semi-circle, Kingsway/Southampton Row to the west.
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