DRAFT CHAPTER 26 Mortimer Street In its original form, as shown on John Prince’s 1719 plan for the Cavendish– Harley estate, Mortimer Street extended from Cavendish Square to Wells Street. Taking its name from the Earl of Oxford’s second title Earl Mortimer, the street was built up from the mid 1730s, following the demolition of the Boarded House, which stood close to its path near the junction with Wells Street (see page ###). The smarter Cavendish Square end, cut off by the creation of Regent Street, was renamed Cavendish Place in 1859 and is separately discussed on page ###. Beyond Wells Street, the eastern portion of present-day Mortimer Street was originally developed as Charles Street, part of the Berners estate, and named after the landowner William Berners’s son and heir. The Middlesex Hospital was built there in 1755–7, house-building following on from 1759. This somewhat lowly street was almost entirely merged with Mortimer Street in 1879 – a very short section east of Cleveland Street, in St Pancras parish, became part of Goodge Street at the same time. Besides shifting Mortimer Street’s identity, these changes of name involved general renumbering of the houses, so that confusion over nineteenth-century addresses easily arises. The short side-street Nassau Street, also described in this chapter, was laid out in the 1760s as part of the Berners estate development, under the name Suffolk Street. Development of the central section of Mortimer Street was mostly undertaken by three individuals responsible for much building in south-east Marylebone – the digger and brickmaker Thomas Huddle, carpenter John Survey of London © Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London Website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/research/survey-london 1 DRAFT Lane, and plasterer William Wilton. Both sides of the new street between Great Portland Street and Edward Street (on the line of the future Regent Street) were built up by Lane from 1735. Several of his houses were very substantial, reflecting westward-looking aspirations for this end of the street – although later references to the stretch east of Edward Street as ‘Little Mortimer Street’ suggest its actual inferiority.1 Further east, the first plot built up on the south side was at the corner with Wells Street, taken by Huddle in 1736, where he built what became the Bear and Rummer. There the development evidently stalled. The pub remained in isolation for a decade, after which the ground attached to it was carved into plots but these were not fully developed until 1757. Between Great Portland and Great Titchfield Streets, the ground on the north side was taken by George Collings, that on the south by Wilton, both of whom developed some plots themselves and assigned others. Building went on from the late 1730s. Collings, a carpenter who had a yard near by in Little Portland Street and had been building in Margaret Street since 1735, went bankrupt in 1742. The block on the north side between Wells and Great Titchfield Streets remained empty until taken by Huddle in 1754, building there still going on into the 1760s.2 In Charles Street, house-building began on the north side, west of the Middlesex Hospital, where the carver James Lovell had his yard on the site of the present 24 Mortimer Street. Lovell built the adjoining house (site of No. 22), selling it on in 1759. The plots next east (at 12–20) were leased in 1760 to Thomas Vincent, mason, but not built up until 1764 or later, following his bankruptcy, when William Goldwin took over the lease. On the south side, the stretch between Berners Street and Wells Street was developed between about 1759 and 1764, the western part being taken by Joseph Booth, carpenter, whose name survives in Booth’s Place at the top of Wells Street. The eastern part was developed by or under Daniel Stackhouse, with James Miller, carver. Survey of London © Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London Website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/research/survey-london 2 DRAFT Further east, facing the Middlesex Hospital, the frontage mostly belonged to John Johnson’s large Berners Street take, and was built up c.1770–1.3 The street was referred to as New Charles Street until 1774, after which it was known as Charles Street, Middlesex Hospital, or, more aspiringly, Charles Street, Cavendish Square. Something of Berners Street’s fashionable early character reached into it, with at least some superior houses, hardly anything of which is left. John Hobcraft, a high-class carpenter who had worked with the Adam brothers, was active hereabouts in association with Lovell.4 In the 1920s the antiquary Herbert Cescinsky illustrated the handsome door surround and chimneypiece of his home at 25 Mortimer Street (formerly 23 Charles Street, now demolished) in his book Early English Furniture and Woodwork; 18 Mortimer Street (formerly 12 Charles Street) still has a door surround of some quality. Commercial and professional activity was soon established in both Mortimer and Charles Streets, with house furnishers such as Mrs Fisher’s Eider Down Warehouse at the corner of Great Titchfield Street in 1770, and various medical or quasi-medical businesses, mostly but not exclusively near the hospital – in 1762 Mr Brown, opposite the Bear and Rummer, was offering a cure for ‘the most inveterate scurvy, leprosy, pimpled faces and old, obstinate swellings’. Artists were in some evidence from early on, notably the equine painter William Shaw, who died in 1773 at Mortimer Street, where he had built ‘a large painting room, with conveniences to receive the animals, from which he painted’.5 The sculptor Joseph Nollekens was resident at the corner of Great Titchfield Street for fifty years. Throughout the nineteenth century Mortimer Street continued to attract artists, especially in the 1840s and especially at the Charles Street end. Daniel Maclise was briefly at No. 22 (then 14 Charles Street) in 1829. Among many other, mostly obscure, figures were the portrait and landscape painter brothers James and John Bridges, at 37 Mortimer Street (18 Charles Street) in 1840s, and at No. 35 (19 Charles Street) the genre painter Alfred Elmore (1840s) and the illustrator Edward Survey of London © Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London Website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/research/survey-london 3 DRAFT Henry Wehnert (1850s). Another illustrator, John Green Waller, at No. 33 (20 Charles Street) in the mid 1840s, was followed briefly around 1855 by Raffaele Pinti, artist and picture restorer. Two painter brothers, James and Andrew Edgar Jeffray were at No. 36 (then 6) Mortimer Street in the mid 1840s. Frederick Cruickshank, briefly at 18 Mortimer Street in about 1841, was followed in the same house by the artists Myra and Rosa Drummond. Solomon Hart, later Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy, was at No. 29 (then 22 Charles Street) briefly in the mid 1840s, along with a topographical painter, James H. Savage. At No. 25 (24 Charles Street) in the early 1840s was the Anglo-Irish artist, novelist and composer Samuel Lover, succeeded there by the orientalist painter Willis Maddox and later the watercolourist Kirkman J. Finlay. The builder, developer and architect John Johnson was based at 27 Charles Street in 1786–92, and the architect John Tarring was at 27 Mortimer Street (23 Charles Street) for around 20 years till his death in 1875, sharing the premises briefly in the mid 1840s with the portrait painter Henry Room.6 The presence of timber yards and associated trades gave rise to several fires on the south side of the street, notably one which in 1825 consumed much of the block between Wells and Great Titchfield Streets, down to Margaret Street, where occupants included a cabinet-maker and a sofa and chair maker, the latter burned out again in 1830. Fire also destroyed a swathe of premises at the back of Nos 13–17, between Wells Mews and Berners Street, in 1858.7 If there was a general trend through the nineteenth century it was the gradual increase in clothing trades, particularly tailoring, dressmaking and millinery, and a concomitant reduction in artisan furniture and building trades, such as upholstery, painting and glazing, cabinet-making, carving and gilding. Other crafts with a showing in the street during the century included the making of pianos and other musical instruments. By the twentieth century there were sundry motor car-related businesses spilling over from Great Portland Street, and film-related industries also made a modest showing. Survey of London © Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London Website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/research/survey-london 4 DRAFT There were various stove and heater manufacturers, the best-known and longest-lasting presence being that of E. E. Pither’s Radiant stoves, and several wallpaper showrooms – Pither himself was a wallpaper and artistic interiors specialist before concentrating on stoves. But the garment trade was the dominant twentieth-century business. In 1910, 36 of the 122 Mortimer Street businesses listed in the Post Office Directory were concerned with making or selling clothing, mostly women’s; by 1980 that figure had risen to 55 out of 114.8 Body and soul were well catered for in Victorian Mortimer Street, especially those of women and girls. A small-scale early initiative, emanating from All Saints, Margaret Street, was the All Saints Home for widows and orphans at No. 59, set up in 1851 by Harriet Byron, founder of the All Saints Sisterhood. After this transferred to Margaret Street in 1856, the house became St Elizabeth’s Home, for the relief of incurable women rejected by the London hospitals.