Cavendish Square and Spencer House: Neo-Classicism, Opportunity and Nostalgia’, the Georgian Group Journal, Vol
Peter Guillery, ‘Cavendish Square and Spencer House: neo-classicism, opportunity and nostalgia’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xxIII, 2015, pp. 75–96
text © the authors 2015 CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE: NEO-CLASSICISM, OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA
PETER GUILLERY
The Society of Dilettanti planned a temple-fronted of Carnarvon, soon made the Duke of Chandos. His academy of arts on the north side of Cavendish Square fortunes stricken after the bursting of the South Sea in the early s. It can now be shown that stone bought Bubble in , Chandos pulled back from plans for and cut for this building was used in the Green Park a palace across the site to build two houses at either elevation of Spencer House ( –), shedding new light end, begun in and only completed in , when on design there. The Cavendish Square site stayed empty he moved in to the western one (Fig. ). This left until speculative pairs of houses were built in – . vacant the ft.-wide central frontage – a significant Their temple-fronted stone façades, hitherto explained failing, as for anyone arriving from almost anywhere as incorporating stone from the s, must now be else in London this was the square’s most prominent understood not as the result of salvage, but as a side and the terminus of its intentionally devised conscious echo of the abandoned academy project. north–south axis with Hanover Square, all the more so as there were then no trees impeding the view. ixty years ago (Sir) John Summerson explained From Chandos’s Marylebone Basin lay directly Sthe grandeur of the speculatively built houses of to the north, beyond where Queen Anne Street now – on Cavendish Square’s north side as runs, amid fields that extended up to Marylebone reflecting the Society of Dilettanti’s plans of the early Park and on to Hampstead. The basin was a water- s for an academy of arts on the site. He supply project that failed commercially, but, however suggested that stone intended for the academy was dormant, it must have been a pleasing amenity. In used in the façades, and mentioned this in John Wood proposed a house for Chandos subsequent editions of Georgian London . He also across the central frontage that might show ‘what the noticed similarities between the houses and Spencer Bath stone wou’d do in town’, but this idea went House ( –). Research carried out for the Survey nowhere. Once his house was complete Chandos of London makes it possible now to recount more spent little time at Cavendish Square, and found the fully what happened, and how Spencer House and presence of building works in the vicinity Cavendish Square are linked. disagreeable. His empty central plot had been allowed to become a rubbish dump. James Ralph’s impudent and widely read Burlingtonian polemic in the Critical Review in CAVENDISH SQUARE TO 1757 followed Pope in lauding the Earl and taking Cavendish Square was laid out in – and its Chandos and the Harleys as targets. He made hay north side taken freehold by James Brydges, the Earl with Cavendish Square:
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE : NEO - CLASSICISM , OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA
‘…there we shall see the folly of attempting great things, before we are sure we can accomplish little ones. Here ’tis, the modern plague of building was first stayed, and I think the rude, unfinish’d figure of this project should deter others from a like infatuation. When we see any thing like grandeur or beauty going forward, we are uneasy till ’tis finish’d, but when we see it interrupted, or intirely laid aside, we are not only angry with the disappointment, but the author too: I am morally assur’d that more people are displeas’d at seeing this square lie in its present neglected condition, than are entertain’d with what was meant for elegance or ornament in it.’
It was in this critical climate that the Society of Dilettanti came into being in the early s. First meetings were in a series of taverns. Horace Walpole famously summed up the early reputation of the Dilettanti in , identifying it as ‘a club, for which the nominal qualification is having been in Italy, and the real one being drunk; the two chiefs are Lord Middlesex and Sir Francis Dashwood, who were seldom sober the whole time they were in Italy’. Drunkenness is not in question – it was even minuted – yet there was also formality and seriousness in the way the Dilettanti conducted their affairs as they embraced a mission of improving taste. In March they resolved to build or procure premises ‘for the more honourable and commodious reception of the Society’, and in May Middlesex, Sir James Gray, Daniel Boone and Henry Harris were appointed, and immediately joined by Dashwood, to find a ‘proper spot’. Four years passed before any more was done. A large committee was appointed in May to find and buy (for £ or less) ground for a new building to house the Society – that is, for its meetings and its collections. The committee, which met at Dashwood’s house in Bolton Street off Piccadilly, included the same men, save Gray who was now a diplomatic resident in Venice. His place was taken by his younger brother, Major George Gray (promoted Lieutenant Colonel in and Colonel in Fig. . Cavendish Square c. ), the Society’s secretary and treasurer. Among (detail from John Rocque’s map of London). others engaged were George Knapton, the painter
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE : NEO - CLASSICISM , OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA and connoisseur, and William Ponsonby, Viscount arts, submitted to his fellow Dilettanti a scheme for Duncannon and later second Earl of Bessborough, a the formation of an academy in early . This was founder member of the Society who from had a probably inspired by John Gwynn’s draft scheme for house on the east side of Cavendish Square (now a public academy which emerged from a group of No. ), as did Simon Harcourt (first Earl Harcourt), artists who met regularly at the Foundling Hospital, the Society’s first president (part surviving as No. a). of which Dingley was soon to become a governor. Chandos had died in and his son Henry (second The plan was judged worthy of encouragement and Duke of Chandos) sold the house at the west end of there were hopes of royal patronage. Around the Cavendish Square’s north side in August . By same time Dashwood initiated a subscription fund December the committee of Dilettanti had decided to for a building at Cavendish Square, plans for which buy the vacant ground adjoining for £ , the money were to be got in hand. By May the fund stood at having been advanced by Dashwood. At this trough £ s. An initial absence of pragmatism is in the building cycle land was relatively cheap. The suggested by the fact that a year later members Society thus gained a ft. in. central frontage to the inclined to submit plans for the building were asked square with a plot extending back ft. or halfway to to include estimates. Queen Anne Street. Joseph Pickford, a mason who In March a committee meeting chaired by had worked frequently with William Kent, was paid Dashwood examined three sets of plans and for measuring and plans. elevations for the intended building. These were By April Major Gray had designed a wall to based on proposals by Dashwood, Dingley and enclose the ground. He, Dashwood and Duncannon Knapton. Dingley’s scheme was the best liked and were entrusted with seeing to this and with clearance there was a determination to advance to work on the of the rubbish in preparation for building. William ground within a year. At the same meeting the Atkinson, a self-described ‘servayor’ who was committee decided to purchase additional property Pickford’s partner and step-son, erected walls facing east of the Cavendish Square ground, behind the the square and along the plot’s north side in – house then held by Lady Abercorn, for the sake of for the much larger than expected sum of £ . back access from Chandos Street. The architect Levelling for a pavement in front and of a ft. depth John Vardy is recorded as having prepared a drawing behind was done by Thomas Gladwin, a ‘digger’ or for a building for the Dilettanti in , later excavation contractor who had been active on the exhibited but no longer extant. He is not mentioned Cavendish–Harley estate since the s. By the end in the Society’s records and there is no reason to of Dashwood had ordered the planting of eight believe his proposal was favourably received. elms and six horse chestnuts on the Society’s The resolve to get on to building failed to hold. ground, probably its more northerly part. The grey The next step in May was merely (but stirringly) stock-brick and stone-coped wall to the square had a declaration of neo-classical intent: central carriage-entrance gates flanked by ball- ‘…to fix upon some Antique Building as a model for topped Portland stone piers and arch-headed and that intended by the Society according to the most stuccoed niches. This classically articulated but exact proportions and measurements that can be short-lived screen was described in as ‘a procured this with a view to prevent the numberless handsome wall and gates . . ., which serve to preserve difficulties that may arise in fixing upon any new Modern Plan, as such an undertaking when finish’d the uniformity of the square’. must amase [sic] the Curious, and having been Robert Dingley, a wealthy merchant prominent approv’d for many ages must naturally put a stop to all in the Russia Company, and a connoisseur of diverse Supercilious Criticisms.’
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Fig. . View of the Temple of Rome and Augustus, Pola, –, gouache by James Stuart. (RIBA Library Drawings & Archives Collections )
This was an important fundamentalist statement, but shafts ft. in. tall (proportions of :.), and there yet another year passed before a choice of model was is a blank or blind circle in the pediment. formally approved. It was to be the Temple of (Rome The committee of Dilettanti ordered that a plan and) Augustus at Pola in Istria (now Pula in Croatia), and elevation for Cavendish Square be prepared known from James Stuart and Nicholas Revett’s ‘forthwith’ on April . A month later evidently remitted record of , made on an Dashwood, Dingley, Col. Gray and John Howe expedition from Venice while they were waiting to gained authority to take the project forward and to travel to Greece (Figs. and ). Soon after they did spend the money in hand. Works commenced with set off in January Stuart and Revett were elected the digging of foundations, begun in May under members of the Society of Dilettanti on the strength the supervision of William Barlow, of a bricklaying of a recommendation from Sir James Gray in Venice. family mostly active around Hanover Square (where The Augustan building at Pola, originally part of a Dashwood now had his town house) and in Mayfair. triad of temples, stands on a podium with steps up to Barlow was paid by Dashwood, later reimbursed by a tetrastyle prostyle Corinthian portico that is ft. the Society for the costs of digging ‘the Foundation in. wide. Its columns, of ft. -in. diameter, have of the Temple of Pola.’
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Dashwood’s group had probably taken designs intentions gelled as a scheme on which work could for the building forward in advance of what is begin until early . Two undated and unsigned recorded in the Society’s minutes. Dingley’s scheme drawings at West Wycombe Park, Dashwood’s of remains unknown, but is likely to have formed country seat, appear to illustrate progress prior to the basis for further refinement, no doubt principally that point (Figs and ). A plan shows the whole emanating from Dashwood and Gray. Colvin Cavendish Square site, with a ‘Grand Council mentions ‘some engraved designs for temples [by Room’ at its centre raised up on a high basement or Dingley] among the architectural drawings at West podium (for a kitchen). This stands behind a large Wycombe Park’, but these have not come to light, at open court or ‘Great Coach Yard’ and a ‘Grand Stair West Wycombe or elsewhere. The choice of Pola as a Case’ in a double flight. The temple-like room is set model might have been made in , but it is not within a ‘Terras of Communication’ and to its rear clear in what form and when Stuart and Revett’s further stairs with a landing lead to a large formal record of was available; it was not published garden to the north. Tetrastyle porches front and until in the fourth and posthumous volume of back are shown as about ft in. wide. The drawing The Antiquities of Athens . It is unlikely that is not precise enough for column diameters to be closely indicative, but they come out at about ft. in. Flanking the front terrace there are outer pavilions for an ‘Academy for Architecture’ to the west and an ‘Academy for Painting and Sculpture’ to the east. Flaps in the drawing permitted the illustration of alternatives, either ground-floor spaces under the academies, to provide lodgings for a cook and porter (west) and ‘Receptacles for Modells’ or casts of statues (east), along with communal privies under both their staircases, or removal of the outer academy blocks entirely and their substitution with single-storey lodges in the site’s outer corners, for the porter (south-west) and the cook (south-east). The relationship of this plan to work undertaken in can be interrogated at Cavendish Square. A substantial drop in ground level of about – ft. (in what is now Dean’s Mews) occurs towards the back of the site. This is not natural, but dug out, probably for the foundations and podium of the Grand Council Room, further back than is indicated on the plan. An unusual drawing of , one of several eccentric views taken in and around the square by John Claude Nattes, shows the sunken site Fig. . Front elevation of the Temple of Rome and with two massive piers, probably stone, in front of Augustus, Pola (James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, coach houses at the back (Fig. ). Behind the brick The Antiquities of Athens , IV, . wall beyond the piers a row of cross vaults spanned (© Victoria and Albert Museum, London ) the property. The piers at least are difficult to
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE : NEO - CLASSICISM , OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA
Fig. . Plan for the Society of Dilettanti’s buildings at Cavendish Square, c. (West Wycombe Park ).
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE : NEO - CLASSICISM , OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA
alternative with minimal fenestration and no entrance on the side drawn – it is a strikingly austere block. Using the plan dimensions, though again there is sketchiness in doing this, the ft. in.- diameter column shafts emerge as about ft. in. tall (proportions of :.). It may be that the circle in the Pola pediment was interpreted as a blocked opening, but links with the Antique model are weak. In relation to the plan the elevation is perhaps an earlier variant that antedates commitment to the model. Rather than the Temple of Pola, the Ionic order and Fig. – Elevation for the Society of Dilettanti’s Grand the festooned open oculus seem to reflect Mereworth Council Room at Cavendish Square, c. Castle, the house of – built to the designs of (West Wycombe Park ) Colen Campbell for Dashwood’s uncle, John Fane, seventh Earl of Westmorland. The West Wycombe account for other than as parts of a substructure of drawings have been convincingly attributed to ; the coach houses are later. Maurice-Louis Jolivet, who was probably working The other early drawing at West Wycombe, an under Giovanni Niccolo Servandoni in England elevation of a heretofore unidentified nature (Fig. ), from , thereby coming to Dashwood’s notice. shows an Ionic portico the proportions of which, Servandoni returned to Paris in May , but Jolivet relative to the whole, tally well with the Grand stayed behind and worked for Dashwood. The Council Room of the plan. It appears to be an draughtsman’s hand may have been Jolivet’s, but the
Fig. . ‘Back of Cavendish Square, London’, , pencil drawing by John Claude Nattes. ( Westminster City Archives )
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE : NEO - CLASSICISM , OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA
Fig. . Sketch elevation and plan for an Academy of Painting, Sculpture & Architecture, Stephen Riou, . (RIBA Library Drawings & Archives Collections ) scheme he was drawing was doubtless that devised Another related design, not taken up, provides by Dingley, Dashwood and Gray. Design was clearly confirmation, if needed, that the Society did intend collaborative, though the engraved designs that its premises at Cavendish Square to be an academy Colvin saw might show that Dingley should be for the improvement of the arts, in other words that identified as the principal author. the Gwynn–Dingley scheme of had been firmly There was also an architectural model. In July incorporated into ambitions for more than mere Dashwood wrote to Col. Gray: ‘My Model was meeting rooms and a museum. Stephen Riou, a advanced as far as the Capitals, and my rascally peripatetic English architect of Huguenot origin, French architect is run off and has left nothing but who had been told about the Society’s plans for his debts, . . . When the Model will be finished I Cavendish Square by Sir James Gray in Venice cannot now take upon me to say.’ Four days later around and subsequently passed time with Dashwood wrote again to Gray striking an uncertain Stuart and Revett, sent a sketch design of a ‘Building note that anticipates revisions to the plans: ‘…let us for an Academy of Painting Sculpture and build what we will some stone will be necessary’, Architecture’ back to England from Istanbul in adding more optimistically that ‘notwithstanding my December (Fig. ). His idiosyncratic proposal Frenchman is ran away I have all the measures so also has a tripartite layout, with an imposing and hope to get the Model finish’d.’ Jolivet had highly columnar front behind a large open court. It probably gone to link up with Servandoni in Paris, to includes ft in.-diameter columns in its giant-order work for him again as a dessinateur . Corinthian portico.
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The other important way in which the project West Wycombe. The Society’s surplus column advanced in was by the purchase of Portland pieces were therefore to be cut back to square for stone. Through the offices of Thomas Adye, a ‘Casual Block’, a loss for which Roper wanted sculptor previously employed by the Dilettanti, compensation. Adye paid up and was reimbursed tons in blocks had arrived in London by July another £ s ½d, bringing the Society’s total . John Devall, an eminent mason, was paid for outlay on Portland stone to £ s ½d. It is not wharfage and the stone was sent on to Cavendish clear that the third consignment was shipped at all. Square. That quantity of stone represented , In early matters stood as follows. There was cubic feet (a ton equalled cubic feet), about a large hole in the ground at Cavendish Square that enough for one elevation of the Grand Council probably had the beginnings at least of a Portland Room. Then, in December , Thomas Roper, a stone substructure made from the first shipment of foreman at the quarries in Portland, wrote to Adye plain blocks ( , cubic feet or tons, worth asking ‘what I must do with the Columns that are £ shipped) all of which had been on site since made by Your order.’ Stones were often supplied cut . The second shipment, or blocks ( c. and moulded, so reducing their weight for shipping cubic feet or tons, worth £ s shipped) and – freight cost as much again as the stone. The column pieces ( cubic feet or tons, worth £ cylindrical column pieces or blocks ( of them shipped), almost enough for eight large columns of weighing tons) stayed in Portland until September four blocks each (each of about cubic feet and when they were shipped with or more . tons), had left Portland in September , but plain blocks, including some for column bases. might not have advanced further than Devall’s wharf. By January the Society had paid Adye The third quantity of stone, worth almost £ , £ s d for Portland stone and its freight. It is not probably before freight charges, might have been cut evident where in London this second shipment for another ten or more columns, or left or ended up as at this point things began to fall apart, as reconstituted as plain blocks of up to as much as will be explained. With respect to stone, Roper wrote tons or , cubic feet, or some combination of the to Adye in April about further column pieces no two. It may still have been in Portland. longer wanted and liability for losses arising. The Society’s academy project unravelled in Dashwood had other business in Portland, . In January a ‘Select Committee of Painters, having ordered sixteen stones for columns at West Statuaries, Architects, Gravers, &c.’ led by Francis Wycombe Park in October , supplying the Hayman approached the Dilettanti. This group had dimensions himself. Of ‘large Scantling’, these were emerged from the St Martin’s Lane Academy, probably destined for West Wycombe’s Roman galvanized no doubt by the work at Cavendish Doric east portico (Fig. ), where lions flank steps as Square. Among its members, many of them leading in Riou’s drawing, deriving there from practitioners, were Stuart and Revett, only just back Michelangelo’s cordonata at Rome’s Capitoline Hill. in England. The Dilettanti were asked to support a This was most likely designed by Dashwood himself, plan for a different and royal academy of arts in an perhaps with Gray. His clerk of works, John existing building. The proposal received a cautiously Donowell, was executant architect. Adye hoped positive response in May, the Society asserting a Dashwood would take the Society’s unwanted stone, claim to equal standing and the presidency. That but the columns were of the wrong dimensions. helped scupper the alliance as the practitioners did Unusually, Dashwood was advised to have his not want to be controlled by amateur gentlemen. columns shipped rough and wrought on the spot in Others among their former colleagues, notably
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE : NEO - CLASSICISM , OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA
Fig. . West Wycombe Park, showing the east portico of , with the mausoleum of – on the hill (photographed c. by A. F. Kersting,). ( Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London )
William Hogarth, deprecated the academy idea in the vicinity of Cavendish Square. The value of the entirely as alien and hierarchical, too French. Society’s property had risen dramatically. In – The dalliance with the Dilettanti, however sincere or George Mercer, a local mason and prolific devious, helped kill off the Cavendish Square speculator, built two Portland stone-fronted and academy; that was perhaps in some measure the pedimented houses just off the square at either end point. The ease with which the Dilettanti gave up on of the north side of what is now Cavendish Place their building is perhaps also attributable to other (one survives in altered form as No. ). Mercer then, and mundane causes. With so much money paid out in September , took the ground north of the for stone the subscription fund had been reduced to Society’s site on a long lease from the Duke of £ s d, nowhere near enough for the project in Chandos, intending development of the Queen Anne hand. Other important factors arose from an Street frontage with houses. These did follow in the upturn in the building cycle that was especially sharp s, and survive in part at Nos. – Queen Anne
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE : NEO - CLASSICISM , OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA
Street. The Society’s ground had a central gateway in Col. Gray was brought in to advise and in its north wall, at which the plan at West Wycombe supervise. Spencer, who has been called Gray’s is annotated ‘Way to Hampstead’. That the academy protégé, was not yet then a member of the Society of would instead be overlooked by the backs of a row of Dilettanti, ineligible for not having made his Grand houses would not have been a welcome Tour – his step-father, William, second Earl Cowper, development, however unsurprising. was a member. Gray, a gentleman and army officer, In early the Dilettanti decided to procure an checked and approved designs by Vardy, the son of a apartment in Montagu House or Somerset House for labourer. From Vardy was obliged, most likely at their meetings and casts, and to sell their Cavendish Gray’s behest, to work alongside James Stuart, who Square property through Dashwood and Gray to in the same year also took on internal remodelling of reinforce the Society’s general funds. George Spencer’s temple-fronted Thames-side villa at Shakespear offered £ , for the ground and more Wimbledon. The building of Spencer House had for the stone subject to valuation. A master begun in early ; the ‘ground floor’, possibly in carpenter, he was the sometimes partner of John fact the basement, was finished by late September. Phillips, who was at this moment about to begin Assuming a winter break, work on the upper storeys building a pair of houses on Cavendish Square’s must have been underway or pending in March west side (now Nos. – ), taken on with John when Spencer paid for the stone. John Devall was Barlow, bricklayer, and employing Henry Keene as Spencer’s mason, in receipt of payments by February architect. But Shakespear was spurned, as the , and the bricklayer was Edward Gray, a major ground was valued at £ , (£ had been paid operator (not known to be related to the Dilettanti just eight years earlier). The Society continued to Grays). The carcass of the house was finished by meet in taverns, henceforth at the Star and Garter in . Horace Walpole credited Col. Gray rather than Pall Mall, and no other buyers for the ground came Vardy with the design of the west front, as did forward for the time being. A purchaser was found Thomas Frognall Dibdin, the nd Earl Spencer’s for the Portland stone. In March Col. Gray librarian, who recorded that the shell of the house received £ s d, a halfpenny short of what had alone cost the colossal sum of , guineas, and been paid out, from the hands of ‘Mr Spencer’. that it had been ‘planned by General Grey, and executed by Vardy’. The most remarkable external feature of Spencer House is its columnar west façade, conspicuously SPENCER HOUSE facing Green Park and entirely of Portland stone John Spencer (later first Earl Spencer) was , (Fig. ). Mercer’s precedent notwithstanding, it was recently married, enormously wealthy and in the unusual to face a London house with Portland stone, throes of building an ostentatiously magnificent town a material generally associated with public or house on the west side of Green Park. The site for institutional buildings. In the absence of drawings or this house had come available after the suicide of building accounts, detailed information about the Henry Bromley, first Baron Montfort on January genesis of the design for this elevation is lacking. It is in his house on the west side of Cavendish likely to have been settled by when the ‘ground Square (now No. ). John Vardy, previously floor’ was built. Gray knew that the Dilettantis’ stone employed by Montfort to design a house for the site was available from his first involvement with Spencer in St James, bought the building agreement and sold in , and he was the medium for its transfer. For it on to Spencer who retained Vardy’s services. Later him, Spencer’s project would have been an
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE : NEO - CLASSICISM , OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA
Fig. . Spencer House, west front of –, photographed in by
Bedford Lemere. ( © Historic England ) 4' 6'' ’ ’ 5
’ ’ ’ 4 8
’ Fig. . Column shafts compared 2 ’ (drawing by Helen Jones). ’ ’ ’ 8 6
’ ’ 4 4 ’ ’ ’ 22' 10'' 18' 3'' ’ 17' 3'' 18' 9'' 7 6
’ ’ 4 4 ’ ’
’ 7
’ 5 5
2' 71/2'' 2' 4''2' 6'' 2' 4''
Temple of Rome Drawings for the Society Spencer House 11–14 Cavendish Square and Augustus, Pola of Dilettanti’s Academy cut down uncut
Order Corinthian Ionic Doric ---- Corinthian
Diameter to height proportions 1:8.7 1:7.8 1:6.9 1:8.7 1:8
Cubic feet 121 78 85 106 80
To n s 7.6 4.9 5.3 6.6 5
note – entasis discounted
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE : NEO - CLASSICISM , OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA opportunity to pursue ideas frustrated at Cavendish proportions were probably dictated by the overall Square; there can be little doubt that the stone was height of the elevation and the need to cut down. destined for Spencer House. The decision to use it Alternatively, though less likely, Doric could have might have been taken well in advance of the been a preference, its proportions obliging cutting payment, which may coincide with the moment the down and limiting height. Gray also brought the material was actually needed. The overall quantity Mereworth–Pola ocular pediment idea from that Spencer purchased from the Dilettanti, even if Cavendish Square. The crossed palm branches are a generously estimated, would not have been enough Baroque device that departs from the West for all of the Green Park elevation, but it would have Wycombe drawing in detail but not in effect. gone a long way to that end. The second shipment’s In so far as the Spencer House elevation as a column pieces or blocks, which had perhaps spent whole was conceived as a neo-classical temple front, two years at Devall’s wharf, would have worked well something for which it has been recognized as an in this eight-column elevation (Fig. ). important staging post in the history of Neo- The column shafts at Spencer House are ft. classicism, it can be related closely to the Dilettanti in. tall with diameters slightly tapering for entasis scheme for Cavendish Square and therefore from a maximum of ft. in. Lower blocks rise ft. attributed to Gray. However, Spencer House’s façade in., two intermediate blocks each ft. in. further, was not a straight lift nor purely Neo-classical. More and upper blocks just ft. in. – odd irregularity. Palladian characteristics were doubtless Vardy’s Discounting diminution for entasis, each column contribution. The rusticated basement and uses about cubic feet of stone or around . tons. pedimented window architraves echo his drawing of Setting this against the volume and weight of the for a British Museum. Vardy’s drawing of columns shipped in ( cubic feet and . tons, for the Dilettanti is not known, but it would be a see above) produces a discrepancy that with ft. in. surprise if it were not similarly Palladian. That is diameters implies cutting down by about ft. in. probably why the Dilettanti did not take it up. There This is consonant with the blocks all originally being is thus an element of hybrid compromise in the roughly ft. in. tall for column shafts ft. in. tall, Spencer House elevation. Impressive though it is, it generating the same :. diameter to column-shaft did meet with criticism. The Dodsleys thought the ratio as at Pola. Howsoever the stone Spencer pediment ‘being extended over so many columns is bought was scattered between Devall’s wharf, too large and heavy’. Gwynn and Thomas Malton Cavendish Square and Portland, the columns at were also critical of the proportions. Spencer House were all but certainly made with the stone intended for those at Cavendish Square. There are obvious departures from what was to have been built at the square. In lieu of Pola’s CAVENDISH SQUARE FROM prostyle tetrastyle Corinthian portico, there are In the meantime the empty ground at Cavendish Doric columns, hexastyle in relation to the Square mouldered. It was not until that its sale pediment, made up to eight with outer columns was secured. The purchaser for £ , was George under dosserets, all engaged with the front wall, Forster Tufnell ( – ), the dissolution of whose though still three-quarters round. This is readily first marriage in was quickly followed by the understood as an opportunistic adaptation of the death of his father, Samuel Tufnell MP, a wealthy eight columns that had been meant for two City politician who had acquired an estate porticoes. The Doric order and its less slender (Langleys) in Essex. He left only £ , to his
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE : NEO - CLASSICISM , OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA
Fig. . – Cavendish Square, built – , photographed in by Chris Redgrave. ( © Historic England )
second son George ‘considering what he is in speculation there until a settlement in . Thereafter possession of already’. That inheritance may have the building world hotted up on the Portland estate, stimulated the Cavendish Square purchase a few the Adam brothers stirring the market deeply. For months later. George Forster Tufnell became an MP Tufnell, for whom remarriage may have brought new in , remarried in and became a father in funds, another catalyst appears to have been John ; he was out of Parliament from to . Elwes, the eccentric and legendarily frugal financier- Tufnell’s Cavendish Square property stayed developer, who bought his freehold of the Cavendish unbuilt upon until . He was evidently not rash, Square property in December for £ , . The biding his time on what had been a problem site. building of four houses in two pairs had begun in He would have had an eye on a dispute between the and was completed in (Fig. ). Duke of Portland and Lord Thomas Foley over The form Tufnell’s speculation took is curious, development rights on land to the north, a damper on and, in the context of the site’s history, striking. When
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Fig. . – Cavendish Square, c. .
he did build, he did so expensively, or seemingly so, mooted the possibility that the stone bought and cut with Portland stone façades and three-quarter for the Dilettanti fifteen years earlier was used at columns for applied temple fronts that plainly recall Cavendish Square. He concluded roundly, ‘One does Spencer House, especially in the treatment of the not lavish Corinthian fronts on speculative houses – pediments, where palm branches support oculi. But unless, indeed, the material for them lies to hand and here what Summerson called ‘magnificent Corinthian can be had cheap.’ porticos’, as if for palazzi, albeit oddly subjoined, It could be that Spencer did leave some loose disguise mere semi-detached pairs of houses. The use stone on the site; Nattes’s view (Fig. ) suggests he of stone is contemporary with that around the corner did not take all that he had paid for. Perhaps enough for the Adams at Chandos House, a grander house, remained to lead Tufnell to countenance the cost of also speculative, but astylar and more fashionable. stone façades. However, no trace of any sale of stone Unaware of the sale of stone to Spencer, Summerson from Spencer or his agents to Tufnell has been found
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE : NEO - CLASSICISM , OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA in either man’s bank account, and logistics and cantilevered stone staircases. Otherwise the interiors mathematics make it unlikely that any pre-cut were smart but unspectacular, more in keeping with column blocks had either been at Cavendish Square the plans than the façades. Tufnell kept the inner or remained unused. west house (No. ) for himself; its pair appears to In July and September there were have been difficult to let. complaints to the parish of St Marylebone’s Vestry of By leaving a gap between the pairs of houses nuisance and obstruction caused by the sawing and Tufnell was respecting the axis to Hanover Square, laying of large stones in Cavendish Square. Tufnell and keeping the central site access that had been undertook to put a stop to this, but in January established by the gate in Gray’s screen wall of he was again reprimanded, this time about stones –. There were no gardens, just small back yards laid on the footway in front of the houses. He was behind which the central passage opened out to a told to see to it that ‘no more Stones be there stable yard (now Dean’s Mews) where the Dilettanti brought or laid’. Were the stones already on site it had dug the foundations for their academy. The would be odd if they were repeatedly dragged out approach and perimeter were graced by arcaded and into the square for sawing, troublesome for workmen stone-dressed walls the inner parts of which were as well as for passers-by. The Cavendish Square revetments to the excavation of . These swept columns are taller and thinner than those at Spencer round in quadrants, as is still the case to the west, House (Fig. ). The shafts are ft. in. tall, with and enclosed a turning circle and open ground in diameters tapering in from ft. in. The lower blocks front of stable and coach-house buildings (Fig. ). are ft. tall, the intermediate ft. –in. and the upper Who designed and built Tufnell’s speculation ft. in. This regular series of heights suggests that remains unknown. Given the similarities with Spencer the blocks were cut to be used in this way, but each House one candidate is John Devall ( – ), elderly column constitutes just cubic feet (entasis but still active. He had been building speculatively on discounted) or tons, a good deal less in volume the Cavendish–Harley (Portland) estate since on than what is implied by what was supplied to the and near Margaret Street, where he lived. He was the Dilettanti in –. The Corinthian order is close in Master of the Masons’ Company in and with his proportions and girth to the Ionic of the West son, also John ( – ), widely employed in the Wycombe elevation. To match Pola’s Antique s. However, he is not known to have acted as an proportions it would need an additional ft. in. in architect and no evidence has been found to link him height. Crucially, however, to account for the stone to Cavendish Square. Nor has any other firm supplied in – it would need an extra ft, documentation of the building project emerged. generating disproportionally slender columns. Tufnell might have relied on Elwes’s experienced Tufnell’s houses are conventional on plan. The network for construction. A sheet of accounts by pretence of the fronts was maintained with single Elwes’s agent, Conquest Jones, includes a reference central entrances, but these mark the inner bays of to the finishing in of ‘the Butch houses’ standard double-pile rear-stair layouts. Chimneys (conceivably meaning cut-up or divided), along with give away the party walls (Fig. ). The inner houses a large payment (£ ) to Edward Gray, the were entered from the intervening passage, where the bricklayer encountered at Spencer House, and brick elevations originally had Doric porches under another to John Bastard, mason. Bastard ( – ) slightly projecting three-bay pediments, entrance was a scion of the family of mason-architects that had positions that dictated central-stair layouts. All four emerged from Blandford, Dorset. He lived in houses were given identically detailed top-lit Marylebone in the s, on Suffolk (now Nassau)
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Street in a house leased from Elwes while he was (where he was active from ), working with engaged in building the Middlesex Hospital; he later William Lister, carpenter. Thomas Gayfere, another moved to what is now New Cavendish Street, his mason, who also supplied Dashwood with stone in home when he died. Bastard had been the mason- , was a co-creditor with Bastard. When Bastard architect for Sir Francis Dashwood’s columnar died in his ‘close friend’ Balthazar Burman, a mausoleum of – at West Wycombe, and was Lincoln’s Inn lawyer and witness to Tufnell and employed in the rebuilding of the south-west pavilion Elwes’s transaction in , was an executor of his of the King Charles Building at Greenwich Hospital will. Bastard’s tomb described him as ‘Mason and in – under the surveyorship of James Stuart. In Architect’. There are links, but Bastard’s known he was party to an assignment from Elwes of connections to the Cavendish Square houses are no eight new houses in Glanville (now Rathbone) Street, more than circumstantial – close associations with an assignee creditor to two bankrupt Marylebone Elwes and Burman, contemporary engagements in builders, John Corsar and William Lloyd, and also the vicinity, and, most tantalizingly, ties with Sir engaged on Harley Street and Queen Anne Street Francis Dashwood.
Fig. . Lichfield House, St James’s Square, – (elevation from the Survey of London ).
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Dashwood (now eleventh Baron Le Despencer) was last encountered in this saga organizing the stone for the east portico of West Wycombe Park (Fig. ). His life since then had been famously eventful. There was high political responsibility, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in –, and scandal about orgiastic and sacrilegious practices at Medmenham (Buckinghamshire) in . From he was joint postmaster-general. He had revived the idea of a building for the Society of Dilettanti, approaching George III in for a site in Green Park for a public sculpture gallery in ‘an exact copy of an Antique Temple’. This gained some traction in , but again ended in failure. Dashwood’s urge to build was not frustrated at West Wycombe. There he had gone column mad, putting up on the south front of the house in – and, at his hilltop mausoleum, prominently visible to anyone travelling the London–Oxford road, another twelve three- quarter Portland stone Doric columns. Summerson more or less attributed the Cavendish Square fronts to James Stuart and compared Lichfield House, No. St James’s Square, of –, where Stuart designed a carefully Fig. . Cavendish Square on the title page of John proportioned giant Ionic order of half columns, Stewart’s Critical Observations on the Buildings and detailed after the Erechtheion in Athens, over a Improvements of London , . rusticated basement and under a pediment, all in Portland stone, for Thomas Anson, a founder member of the Dilettanti (Fig. ). Nothing has Despencer (Dashwood) or Col. Gray and an been discovered to rule out an attribution of the awareness of the site’s history. The former continued Cavendish Square houses to Stuart, but neither has to live in Hanover Square, from where the gap on the anything been found to reinforce it. It cannot hold, if north side of Cavendish Square would have been only because of the comparatively squat and clearly visible. Perhaps the existence of the model ‘incorrect’ proportions of Tufnell’s Corinthian order. from was a spur (via Bastard or otherwise) to Whoever did design the Cavendish Square temple urge adaptation of the abandoned academy scheme fronts was thinking of, but not copying, Spencer to the Cavendish Square site fifteen years later. House, and apparently conscious of but not in thrall Responsibility aside, and to paraphrase Summerson: to Stuart and Revett’s as yet unpublished record why lavish Corinthian fronts on speculative houses? from Pola (Figs. and ). The inspirational link must Summerson’s answer no longer works. have been drawings and/or the model of the Tufnell’s houses were praised by John Stewart in Dilettanti scheme, which was surely tetrastyle as ‘fine examples [of] unity of order enriched Corinthian. This implies contact with either Le with ornament, in fair and high polished materials’,
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII CAVENDISH SQUARE AND SPENCER HOUSE : NEO - CLASSICISM , OPPORTUNITY AND NOSTALGIA but their grandeur was effectively mocked by his helped suppress the Jacobites in the s. Gray was title-page illustration (Fig. ). The object at centre promoted Lieutenant General in and continued stage in Stewart’s view was a gilt-lead equestrian as Secretary and Treasurer of the Society of statue of the Duke of Cumberland, the ‘Butcher’ of Dilettanti to . Le Despencer (Dashwood) had Culloden. This had been erected in in the ceased to be active with the Dilettanti by , but he middle of Cavendish Square at the cost of Lt. Gen. too had been a keen promoter of militia, and the first William Strode ( c. – ), who had fought under Colonel of the Buckinghamshire Militia from to and befriended the Duke, and whose own memorial . These military links supply yet more in Westminster Abbey records him as ‘a strenuous circumstantiality, but networks of gentlemen officers assertor of Civil and Religious Liberty’. He was did exist, and relations were not always cordial, probably a cousin of another William Strode who sometimes descending to the ‘theatrical displays of had been a founding member of the Society of mutual antagonism [that were] so typical of the Dilettanti; Hogarth painted the family. At the time Georgian officer corps’. Another local military Lt. Gen. Strode lived on Harley Street, on the north- gentleman was the intellectual and well-connected east corner with Queen Anne Street. The Duke’s (to some pugnacious and bumptious) Scot, Col. sister Amelia (who had paid for a lead statue of (later General) Robert Clerk, for whom Robert and George III for Berkeley Square in ) lived at the James Adam designed and from built a west end of the north side of Cavendish Square. deliberately French-style hôtel a stone’s throw north Strode conceived what was London’s first outdoor from Cavendish Square, a few doors away from statue of a soldier in and Lord Bessborough, Strode’s house on Queen Anne Street. Next door to another of the Dilettanti, mediated with the that the same firm began work on a speculation in landowner, the Duke of Portland, to clear , the plainly stone-fronted Chandos House. permission. In that same year Strode was alleged to Further, Lt. Gen. Lord Robert Bertie, Colonel of the have withheld clothing from his soldiers, a charge of th Regiment of Foot, built what is now No. which he was acquitted at a court martial in . Cavendish Place, a different stone’s throw east, also The statue was made by John Cheere, who had in – , and from Joseph Windham, an produced another version of Cumberland for Dublin active member of the Dilettanti and collaborator with in . The paunchy figure in modern dress faced James Stuart on volume two of The Antiquities of north to the exactly contemporary temple fronts. Athens , lived within this tight radius at what is now That the statue faced this way, presenting its rear to No. Chandos Street. those who approach the square along the Hanover As the Adam brothers’ presence illustrates, taste Square axis, may reflect where Princess Amelia and had turned. In a revision of James Ralph’s critique Strode lived. It also looked to where the Adams were published in Cavendish Square again received a building, and the way to Scotland. It was disapproving finger wag. Tufnell’s houses were judged immediately ridiculed on aesthetic grounds; the ‘…beautiful, when singly considered, [but] politics of the gesture appear to have passed without exceedingly deficient, when we attempt to guess at the published comment. intention of the builder. Their exact resemblance Tufnell was not one of the Dilettanti, but in tempts the beholder to conclude, that they were meant he was promoted Colonel of the East Middlesex as parts of some structure hereafter to be raised; and yet every circumstance about them shews, that they Militia. Unlike Strode he was probably not a veteran can never, with the least propriety, be made part of any of Culloden, but the men no doubt knew each other. regular or stately edifice.’ Between the two in age was Col. Gray who had
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This is brutally acute, but the suspicion has to be ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS that ‘herebefore’ should be substituted for I am grateful to the Society of Antiquaries and ‘hereafter’. The author evidently had no knowledge Charles Sebag-Montefiore for access to and of how closely the houses reflected what the permission to quote from archives in the Society’s Dilettanti had wanted to build. care, to Sir Edward Dashwood, Mary Hilder and The Society of Dilettanti had become ever more Maria Lundgren at West Wycombe Park for focussed on the study of classical antiquities and the permissions and help with the consultation and Royal Academy of Arts had been inaugurated in reproduction of drawings in their care, to Joseph . The Dilettanti’s neo-classical temple of the arts Friedman and Jane Rick for help and information was a sorry might-have-been. Tufnell, Strode, with respect to Spencer House, to Lynne Houghton Dashwood and Gray are unlikely to have indulged in at the King’s Fund, Cavendish Square, and to Susan nostalgia of the sour grapes or consciously Jenkins for access to research notes. Others who retardataire kind, and would not have thought have assisted include Pamela Hunter, Hoare & Co. themselves unfashionable. Indeed, as Summerson archivist, Orla O’Brien, RBS archivist, and several discussed, Robert Adam deployed temple fronts in colleagues in the Survey of London. the early s for the Society of Arts and at No. St James’s Square, where the order was Corinthian and the mason was Devall. Yet it can be said that the Corinthian temple fronts of Portland stone given to the speculative houses on the north side of Cavendish NOTES Square in – were less a matter of architectural . John Summerson, ‘The Society’s House: an salvage, more one of old soldiers wistfully harking architectural study’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts , (Oct. ), pp. – . back to the lost academy of the Dilettanti. . Huntington Library, Pasadena, Stowe Manuscripts / , f. , as noted by Susan Jenkins. . Survey of London , Marylebone, forthcoming. See also Charles Henry & Muriel Isabella Collins Baker, CONCLUSION The Life and Circumstances of James Brydges, First It is necessary to conclude without a full explanation. Duke of Chandos, Patron of the Liberal Arts (Oxford, ); Susan Jenkins, Portrait of a Patron: Spencer all but certainly used the Dilettanti stone, The Patronage and Collecting of James Brydges, leaving Tufnell to start almost wholly anew. That st Duke of Chandos ( – ) (Aldershot, ). being so, it is unclear why Tufnell came so close to . James Ralph, A Critical Review of the Publick replicating the temple of the Dilettanti in stone in a Buildings, Statues and Ornaments in and around speculation. Whatever the reason, there can be little London and Westminster (London, ), p. ; Matthew Craske, ‘From Burlington Gate to doubt that the temple fronts at Spencer House and Billingsgate: James Ralph’s attempt to impose Cavendish Square with their ocular pediments do Burlingtonian classicism as a canon of public taste’, both derive closely from the Society of Dilettanti’s in Barbara Arciszewska and Elizabeth McKellar academy project and Sir Francis Dashwood, Col. (eds), Articulating British Classicism: New George Gray and Robert Dingley’s pursuance in approaches to eighteenth-century architecture of a purely Neo-classical imitation of the Temple of (Aldershot, ), pp. – . . The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Rome and Augustus at Pola. Correspondence online. . Lionel Cust and Sidney Colvin (ed.), History of the Society of Dilettanti (London, ), pp. –.
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. Society of Antiquaries Library, Dilettanti Society . Anne Purchas, ‘Maurice-Louis Jolivet’s Drawings Archives (hereafter DSA), B (Minutes, II), May at West Wycombe Park’, Architectural History , and Dec. ; C (Minutes and Reports of ( ), pp. – . Committees, I), p. ; London Metropolitan . DSA, G , ff. , . Archives (LMA), MDR/ // – ; Ingrid . Purchas, loc. cit . Roscoe et al. , A Biographical Dictionary of . James Bettley, ‘A Design by Stephen Riou for an Sculptors in Britain, – (London and New Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture’, Haven, ), pp. –. The Burlington Magazine , / (Aug. ), . DSA, B , March, April and May ; C , pp , –. Riou lived the last decade of his life p. ; G (Correspondence, vol. ), ff. –, –, in the s close to Cavendish Square at , – : Roscoe et al. , op. cit. , p. . Welbeck Street ( Survey of London , forthcoming). . Robert and James Dodsley, London and Its . DSA, G , ff. – ; Roscoe et al. , op. cit. , p. . Environs Described (London, ), II, p. . . DSA, G , ff. – : British Library, Add MS , . DSA, B , May ; C , pp. , ; G , f. ; John ff. , v. H. Appleby, ‘Robert Dingley, F.R.S. ( – ): . DSA, B , –, passim; G , ff. , ; Bodleian Merchant, Architect, and Pioneering Philanthropist’, Library, MSS DD Dashwood c. , B. //a (letter Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London , from John Tucker in Weymouth to Sir Francis () (July ), pp. – ; Howard Colvin, Dashwood, Oct. ): James W. P. Campbell, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, ‘The supply of stone for the rebuilding of St Paul’s – , th edition (New Haven and London, Cathedral – , Construction History , / ), pp. - ; Jason M. Kelly, ‘The Society of ( ), pp. – . Dilettanti and the Planning of a Museum’, . DSA, B , Feb.–May ; C , p. ; G , ff. – . (www.jasonmkelly.com/ / / /the-society-of- . LMA, MDR/ // –; Survey of London , dilettanti-and-the-planning-of-a-museum). See also forthcoming. Jason M. Kelly, The Society of Dilettanti: Archaeology . DSA, B , April–May , March ; C , pp. , and Identity in the British Enlightenment (New ; G , f. ; Cust and Colvin, op. cit. , p. : Haven and London, ). Survey of London, forthcoming. . DSA, B , March and May ; C , pp. , . . Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Aedes Althorpianae; . Colvin, op. cit. , p. . or An Account of the Mansion, Books and Pictures at . DSA, B , May . Althorp, etc , I (London, ), p. lx; Joseph . James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, The Antiquities Friedman, Spencer House: Chronicle of a great of Athens , I (London, ), p. vi and IV (London, London mansion (London, ), pp. –, – , ), pp. iv, – and plates; DSA, B , April ; – , , –; F.H.W. Sheppard (ed.), Survey of Kerry Bristol, ‘The Social World of James London , XXX: The parish of St James, Westminster: “Athenian” Stuart’, and Frank Salmon, ‘Stuart as Part One, South of Piccadilly (London, ), Antiquary and Archaeologist in Italy and Greece’ in pp. – ; Bristol, loc. cit. , Richard Hewlings, ‘The Susan W. Soros (ed.), James ‘Athenian’ Stuart London Houses’, and Julius Bryant, ‘“The Purest – : the rediscovery of antiquity (New Haven Taste” – James “Athenian” Stuart’s Work in Villas and London, ), pp. and . and Country Houses’, in Soros (ed.), op. cit. , . DSA, B , May ; C , p. ; Cust and Colvin, pp. , , – , –. op. cit. , p. . . See Architectural Review , July , p. . . DSA, B , March ; G , f. . . Robert and James Dodsley, London and Its Environs . Colvin, op. cit. , p. (first mentioned in the second Described, etc , III (London, ), pp. –. edition of ). . Survey of London , XXX, op. cit. , p. . . Nottingham University Library Manuscripts . The National Archives, PROB / / ; LMA, (NUL), DL ; Andrew Byrne, ‘The Georgian MDR/ // –; Centre for Bucks Studies, Mews’, Georgian Group Journal , ( ), D-D/A/ . These Tufnells are not to be confused pp. –; Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, The London with a seemingly unrelated family of masons and Square: gardens in the midst of town (New Haven builders – another Samuel Tufnell (d. and and London, ), p. . sometimes Tuffnell) was master mason to
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Westminster Abbey and a contractor for the . Survey of London , XXIX, The Parish of St James, building of Westminster Bridge. See Roscoe, Westminster, Part Two, North of Piccadilly (London, op. cit. , pp. –. ), pp. – : Richard Hewlings, ‘The London . DSA, G , f. ; Cust and Colvin, op. cit. , pp. –; Houses’, in Soros (ed.), op.cit. , pp. –. LMA, MDR/ // ; City of Westminster . John Stewart, Critical Observations on the Buildings Archives Centre (CWAC), T /, July ; St and Improvements of London (London, ), Marylebone ratebooks; History of Parliament pp. –. online; Alexander Gordon, ‘Elwes , . NUL, Pw F ; CWAC, ratebooks; Whitehall John ( – )’, rev. Anita McConnell, Oxford Evening Post or London Intelligencer , April– Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, ). May ; Town and Country Magazine , , p. . Summerson, loc. cit. , pp. –. and , pp. –: Middlesex Journal or Chronicle . Hoare & Co., bank ledgers, – ; Royal Bank of Liberty , - April ; Longstaffe-Gowan, of Scotland archives, Drummonds Bank ledgers, op. cit. , pp. –. Lacking admirers, the statue was – . taken down in . A replica was mounted on the . CWAC, T /, July and Sept ; T /, pp. , surviving plinth in , made of soap on a steel , . armature by the Korean artist Meekyoung Shin as . CWAC, ratebooks. Written in Soap: A Plinth Project . . CWAC, Ashbridge /CAV, drawings by Jean . Friedman, op. cit. , p. ; Patrick Woodland, Claude Nattes, and c. ; NUL, DL ; ‘Dashwood, Francis, eleventh Baron Le Despencer Richard Horwood, Map of London , –. ( – )’, and L. H. Cust, ‘Gray, Sir James, . Roscoe, op. cit. , p. ; LMA, MDR/ // . second baronet ( c. – )’, rev. S. J. Skedd, . LMA, MDR/ // ; // ; // ; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, // – ; // ; // ; // and ); History of Parliament online. ; // and ; // ; // ; . Alan J. Guy, ‘The army of the Georges – ’, // ; The National Archives, PROB / / ; (eds) David G. Chandler and Ian Beckett, The Oxford PROB / / ; British Library, Add MS , History of the British Army (Oxford, ), p. . ff. –; Bodleian Library, MS D.D Dashwood c. , . Colin Thom, ‘Robert Adam’s first Marylebone B. //– and c. , B. //a, a; West Wycombe town house. The story of General Robert Clerk, the Park, C.I. / ( ), design for mausoleum by John Countess of Warwick and their mansion in Bastard, ; Colvin, op. cit. , pp. –; John Bold Mansfield Street’, Georgian Group Journal , et al , Greenwich: An Architectural History of the ( ); Tara Judith Sarah Draper, ‘Chandos House’, Royal Hospital for Seamen and the Queen’s House Georgian Group Journal , ( ), pp. –. (New Haven and London, ), p. . . Survey of London , forthcoming. . Betty Kemp, Sir Francis Dashwood: An Eighteenth- . Anonymous reviser of James Ralph, A Critical Century Independent (London and New York, Review of the public buildings etc (London, ), ), p. : Kelly, loc. cit . p. .
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