watkin guerci 28/7/08 8:22 am Page 136 Charles Barry’s Designs for Northumberland House MANOLO GUERCI his essay is concerned with three remarkable sets of designs made in 1852–4 by Sir Charles Barry for Northumberland House in London, the T greatest representative of the old aristocratic palaces on the Strand. Presented and analysed here for the first time, they can be reckoned amongst the most accomplished achievements of England’s leading interpreter of the Italian Renaissance palace, whose work has received no attention in recent years.1 Built by one of the most powerful Jacobean courtiers, Lord Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton, between 1605 and c.1611, as a massive four-towered square block around a central courtyard with a large garden extending to the Thames (fig. 1), Northampton (later Northumberland) House remained in the family of his heirs, the Earls of Suffolk, until 1642.2 Through the marriage in that year of Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, into the Suffolk family, the house became a property of the Percys, who used it as their primary London residence for the following 234 years, until its tragic demolition in 1874. A new street called Northumberland Avenue was built instead, to connect Trafalgar Square with the newly-created Victoria Embankment. By the time of Barry’s involvement, Northumberland House epitomised some 150 years of architectural practice. Architects called in for advice, or directly involved with alterations, included Edward Carter, John Webb, Daniel Garrett, James Paine, Robert Adam, C.R. Cockerell, Thomas Hardwick and Thomas Cundy. Edward Carter had completely rebuilt the south front of the house for the 10th Earl of Northumberland 136 watkin guerci 28/7/08 8:22 am Page 137 manolo guerci Fig. 1 John Smythson, [1609]: survey of the ground floor of Northampton (later Northumberland) House at Charing Cross, London between 1642–9, initiating a process of continuous alterations which gradually trans- formed it into a secluded riverside palace with its public side moved away from the Strand. A few years later, in 1655–7, John Webb designed the great external staircase erected by Edward Marshall in the middle of the south front to provide a direct connection to the garden, and remodelled Carter’s interiors.3 Daniel Garrett was responsible for updating the Strand front “in order to make it appear less like a prison,” and for adding two wings in the garden.4 The east one contained service rooms, while that on the west included a Library, Bed Chamber and a Waiting Room.5 Commissioned by the 7th Duke of Somerset, the 10th Earl’s grandson, in 1748, works were carried on under Sir Hugh Smithson, who took the name of Percy through marriage and in 1766 became 1st Duke of Northumberland of the third creation. It was he who transformed the newly-created west wing into an enormous two-storey Picture Gallery or Ball Room 106 feet long, to be completed in c.1754–7 by Garrett’s successor, James Paine (fig. 2). Lavishly decorated, the Gallery had nine great windows alternated with oval and pier glasses on the garden side, while on the oppo- site one there were two identical chimney pieces supported by Barbarian captives and surmounted by elaborate overmantels which framed the full-length portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland.6 The updating of the Strand front was followed by that of the courtyard eleva- tions, which were finished “in the Roman style of architecture,”7 that is Palladianised, and faced with Portland stone. In the 1770s, Robert Adam created the famous Glass Drawing Room in the state apartments on the south side for the new Lord and Lady Northumberland, together with some magnificent new interiors for Syon House and Alnwick Castle, the family’s suburban and ancestral seats.8 A Neo-Classical version of the Baroque Mirror Room which had Italian prototypes such as the rooms by Filippo 137 watkin guerci 28/7/08 8:22 am Page 138 the persistence of the classical Juvarra at the Palazzo Reale in Turin, the Gallery at the Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj in Rome, or the Porcelain Room at the Palazzo Reale at Portici, Naples, this was “a splendid chamber for ‘the parade of life’,” with eight large pier glasses and walls sheathed with red and green spangled-glass panels overlaid with gilt-metal ornaments. 9 Lit by a central chande- lier and a number of candelabra, it featured an inlaid-scagliola chimneypiece of a sober Neo-Classical design. By the early nineteenth century, constant alterations to the south front had apparently caused some structural problems. The outer wall was leaning outward, while many of the state rooms still maintained their original character of being too narrow in proportion to their length.10 Called in for advice by the 3rd Duke of Northumberland in 1819,11 C.R. Cockerell remarked that they had “the appearance rather of galleries than salons,”12 and judged the great staircase, essentially unal- tered since its first erection, “dark, and unpleasant in its Fig. 2 Charles Barry, 1853: sudden approach from the Hall door.” He thus proposed a “magnificent disposition,” Survey of the ground floor of Northumberland House as that is a new saloon in the courtyard, which would have made an immense room some altered by Thomas Cundy in ninety feet square, probably unmatched within the context of a private residence. 1818‒24 Cockerell’s involvement at Northumberland House was to be limited to hasty observations; the 3rd Duke therefore commissioned Thomas Hardwick, a pupil of Sir William Chambers who had previously worked at Syon, to remodel the interior.13 But it was Thomas Cundy who, between 1818 and 1824, eventually carried out what was the fifth alteration of the south front, giving Northumberland House that character- istic nineteenth-century appearance documented in several photographs of the early 1870s.14 Perhaps the grandest aspect of Cundy’s alterations was the reconstruction of the main internal staircase as three large flights of veined marble steps, particularly praised during the Great Exhibition of 1851, when the 4th Duke, another important Algernon in the history of Northumberland House, opened it to the public for the first time (together with Syon House).15 A philanthropist, art collector and patron of the arts immersed in travel and archaeological exploration, Algernon “the Good” was one of the first Englishmen to journey in Upper Egypt to record Pharoanic remains there.16 In Rome in 1853 the Duke met the architect and archaeologist Luigi Canina, who had restored the gardens of the Villa Borghese in 1822, to discuss the scheme for the interior restoration of 138 watkin guerci 28/7/08 8:22 am Page 139 manolo guerci Alnwick Castle. Carried out between 1854 and 1863, this included a new set of state apartments designed by Anthony Salvin, one of the finest Victorian exponents of the castle style who had already worked for the Percys.17 By September 1851, the 4th Duke had also commissioned Charles Barry to inspect the interiors of Northumberland House, with the view of a grand scheme of recon- struction of the south front.18 Had it been realised, this would have been the sixth as well as the last alteration of the public side of the house. Given the Duke’s penchant for sixteenth-century Roman palaces, the choice of Barry must have been an almost inevitable one: his club houses in Pall Mall, The Travellers’ (1830–2) and The Reform (1838–41); the British Embassy at Constantinople (1845–7); and the much grander Bridgewater House in London (1846–51), had made him the undisputed interpreter of Italian Renaissance palaces on British soil.19 In addition, Barry led the way in the alteration of pre-existing buildings, which he would almost invariably rework in a highly Italianate fashion. Amongst these were notable country houses such as Trentham Hall, Staffordshire, recon- structed for the 2nd Duke of Sutherland between 1834 and 1849;20 Highclere Castle, Hampshire, remodelled for the 3rd Earl of Carnarvon in 1842–9;21 and Cliveden House, Buckinghamshire, rebuilt for the 2nd Duke of Sutherland in 1850–1.22 Barry’s unexecuted schemes of this type included alterations for Petworth House, the seat of the Dukes of Egremont, the other branch of the Percy family.23 From the architect’s point of view, notwithstanding his full-time engagement with the Houses of Parliament since 1836, Northumberland House represented a unique chance to work on the greatest and only surviving example of the Strand palaces. Appropriately enough, it faced the newly-created Trafalgar Square (1840s), Barry’s only urban project to be realised.24 The first series of plans for Northumberland House is dated 25 May 1852.25 It consists of a single sheet showing the existing layout with proposed alterations of the ground floor, and, at either side of it, part of the basement wings of the house (fig. 3). The purpose was the improvement of the state apartments on the garden side, to remedy, as it has been suggested, both the constriction of the seventeenth- century quadrangular plan as well as the narrowness of its interiors. Furthermore, given the considerable social changes going on in the area, the Strand entrance into the house no longer afforded a dignified and safe route.26 Hence, Barry’s proposal to link the outer wings in the garden by a continuous arcade providing the house with an imposing new entrance from the south through Scotland Yard and Whitehall, an idea which would be further elaborated in the second and third series of designs (see 139 watkin guerci 28/7/08 8:23 am Page 140 the persistence of the classical Fig.