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Clarendon House was a town mansion which stood on Piccadilly in London, England, from the 1660s to the 1680s. It was built for the powerful politician Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, and was the grandest private London residence of its era.
History
After the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, new houses began to spring up in the West End to accommodate Charles II's courtiers. Piccadilly was little more than a country lane, but the land to the north of it was just beginning to be used for housing; the next several decades would see the development of the whole of this area, which was to become London's leading aristocratic residential district, Mayfair. Two other celebrated mansions were built close to Hyde's at around the same time. To the east Sir John Denham was building the house that later became Burlington House, and to the west Lord Berkeley was building Berkeley House, later Devonshire House.
Lord Clarendon acquired the 8-acre (3.2 ha) site for his house by royal grant in 1664. Ironically in view of later events he always maintained that he had been reluctant to build such an ostentatious house, but was unable to rent any suitable mansion. Clarendon House was built between that year and 1667 to designs by Roger Pratt. It was set well back from the street behind a courtyard. The central section had nine bays and the two side wings were each three bays wide. The house was built on the double pile plan, meaning that it was two rooms deep, and had two main storeys of roughly equal height. There was a raised basement below and a tall attic storey with dormer windows above. The roof was flat and balustraded and topped with a cupola. The style was typical of the English fashion of the day, clearly influenced by classical principles, symmetrical and pedimented, but lacking any classical orders. Little is known about the interior layout beyond what can be surmised from the exterior, from Pratt's other works, and from the conventions of the time. It probably had a large top lit central staircase hall and a series of state apartments. It had 101 hearths.
Clarendon House was praised both by contemporaries and by later architectural critics. John Evelyn thought it was "the best contriv'd, the most useful, graceful and magnificent house in England". Three hundred years later, John Summerson wrote: "Clarendon House was among the first great classical houses to be built in London and easily the most striking of them." It was to prove an influential model for future English houses, but its impact was felt much more in the design of country houses than London mansions. Belton House in Lincolnshire, which is sometimes said to be the exemplar of the English country house, was closely based on Clarendon House.
In 1667, the same year that his house was finished, Clarendon fell from favour. His image had not been helped by the grandeur of his mansion, which is believed to have cost around £40,000. Among the many allegations against him it was charged that he had appropriated, to build his house, stone intended for repairs to St. Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London. That same year, on 14 June 1667, Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary: "...some rude people have been... at my Lord Clarendon's where they cut down the trees before his house and broke his windows." In response to the allegations, the King abandoned his former favourite. In 1667, Clarendon fled to France, where he died in 1674.
In 1675, his heirs sold Clarendon House to Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle, for £26,000, and in 1683, Albemarle resold it to a consortium of investors led by Sir Thomas Bond. Bond demolished it and built Dover Street, Albemarle Street, and Bond Street on the site. Albemarle Street ran right through the centre of the site of the house, which had faced directly down St. James's Street.
The building of the house and the resentment it caused are major elements in The Piccadilly Plot, the seventh of the Thomas Chaloner series of mystery novels by Susanna Gregory.
References
- London's Mansions by David Pearce, (1986) ISBN 0-7134-8702-X
- The London Rich by Peter Thorold (1999) ISBN 0-670-87480-9
5 Annotations
Second Reading
Bill • Link
Clarendon House, PICCADILLY, the town house of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, "the great Lord Chancellor of Human Nature." It stood on the north side of Piccadilly, exactly fronting St. James's Palace. Charles II. granted the ground, and Pratt, we are told by Evelyn, was the name of the architect . The date of the grant is June 13, 1664. The populace called it Dunkirk House, Holland House, and Tangier Hall.
Clarendon, in his autobiography, admits the "weakness and vanity" he had exhibited in the erection of this house, and "the gust of envy" which it drew upon him; while he attributes his fall more to the fact that he had built such a house than to any misdemeanour he was thought to have been guilty of. Lord Rochester (Clarendon's second son) told Lord Dartmouth that when his father left England he ordered him to tell all his friends "that if they could excuse the vanity and folly of the great house, he would undertake to answer for all the rest of his actions himself." There was much in the house to call up popular clamour against him. Part of it was built with stones designed, before the Civil War, for the repair of old St. Paul's. He was said to have turned to a profane use what he had bought with a bribe. Old St. Paul's supplied stones for the palace of another great minister of State; but Somerset stole, Clarendon bought. The popular feeling is embodied in the following lines :—
Lo ! his whole ambition already divides
The sceptre between the Stuarts and Hydes.
Behold, in the depth of our Plague and Wars,
He built him a Palace outbraves the stars;
Which house (we Dunkirk he Clarendon names)
Looks down with shame upon St. James;
But 'tis not his golden globe will save him,
Being less than the Custom-house farmers gave him;
His chapel for consecration calls,
Whose sacrilege plundered the stones from Paul's.
--Clarendon's House-warming, by Andrew Marvell.
---London, Past and Present. H.B. Wheatley, 1891.
Terry Foreman • Link
Clarendon House was a town mansion which stood on Piccadilly in London, England, from the 1660s to the 1680s. It was built for the powerful politician Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, and was the grandest private London residence of its era. In 1675, his heirs sold Clarendon House to Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle, for £26,000, and in 1683, Albemarle resold it to a consortium of investors led by Sir Thomas Bond. Bond demolished it and built Dover Street, Albemarle Street, and Bond Street on the site. Albemarle Street ran right through the centre of the site of the house, which had faced directly down St. James's Street. See those streets on the 1674 Rocque map.
http://www.motco.com/map/81002/Se…
Terry Foreman • Link
The text above was copied from Wikipedia 2/2/2017
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cla…
San Diego Sarah • Link
In the Spring of 1669 Cosmo, the future Grand Duke of Turin, visited Clarendon House. From his early Journal notes, I suspect the ouster of Chancellor Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, had come as a surprise to him and his companions.
I've corrected scanning errors, and shortened paragraphs. I hope my guesses are correct.
After dinner his highness went to see the house lately built by the Lord Chancellor, my Lord Hyde, Duke of Clarendon, father-in-law of the Duke of York, to which the people, with whom he has incurred great odium, have given the name of Dunkirk House; for, they consider him the cause of the city of Dunkirk having been sold to France, a place of great importance to the pretensions made to that country and to the provinces of Flanders, and one of the safest ports in Europe, vessels being able to enter it in all winds; by this appellation, therefore, they mean to insinuate that the money which he gained by the negotiations had been employed in the building of this palace.
294
It is in an advantageous situation, which increases its magnificence, being in front of a wide street, leading down to St. James's Palace, which is directly opposite to it.
Its form is square; on the outside, from being embellished with stone ornaments, regularly disposed according to the rules of architecture, it is extremely light and cheerful, and in the interior, commodious and sumptuous.
San Diego Sarah • Link
PART 2
From the inner part you descend into the garden, surrounded, in its whole extent, by walls, which support flourishing espaliers, formed of various fruit-trees; these render the view very agreeable, although the garden has no other ornament, than compartments of earth filled with low and beautiful parterres and spacious walks; over which, in order to keep them smooth and level, they roll certain heavy cylindrical stones, to keep the grass down.
At present, this house, in consequence of the contumacy of the lord chancellor, who has been banished from the kingdom, is incorporated with the royal domains, and is at the king's disposal.
The lord chancellor was a lawyer, his first employment having been that of an advocate, and he was well versed in everything except polite learning; he secretly professed the tenets of the Presbyterian sect, but in appearance adhered to the established religion of the kingdom.
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I think it is significant that Count Lorenzo Magalotti, and presumably Cosmo, assumed that Clarendon was a Duke. We know that was the position Charles II wanted to bestow on him, but Hyde famously said he couldn't afford to be a Duke. In the ensuing years, Charles paid him enough to build this mansion. Maybe Hyde's ouster was so shocking, as to be unbelievable, to other nations?
Or maybe Turin was so small it didn't have access to Ambassadorial communications from anywhere, or subscribe to The Gazette.
From:
TRAVELS OF COSMO THE THIRD, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY,
THROUGH ENGLAND,
DURING THE REIGN OF KING CHARLES THE SECOND (1669)
TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN MANUSCRIPT
https://archive.org/stream/travel…
His highness, Cosmo, must be considered only as a traveler. Under his direction, the narrator of the records was Count Lorenzo Magalotti, afterwards Secretary to the Academy del Cimento, and one of the most learned and eminent characters of the court of Ferdinand II.