Clarendon House was a town mansion which stood on Piccadilly

Piccadilly

Piccadilly is a major street in central London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is completely within the city of Westminster. The street is part of the A4 road, London's second most important western artery. St...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 from the 1660s to the 1680s. It was built for the powerful politician Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon

Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon

Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon was an English historian and statesman, and grandfather of two English monarchs, Mary II and Queen Anne.-Early life:...

 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

West End of London

The West End of London is an area of central London, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings, and entertainment . Use of the term began in the early 19th century to describe fashionable areas to the west of Charing Cross...

 to accommodate Charles II

Charles II of England

Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...

's courtiers. Piccadilly was little more than a country lane, but the land to the north of it was just beginning to be utilised for housing; the next several decades would see the development the whole of this area, which was to become London's leading aristocratic residential district, Mayfair

Mayfair

Mayfair is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...

. 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

Burlington House

Burlington House is a building on Piccadilly in London. It was originally a private Palladian mansion, and was expanded in the mid 19th century after being purchased by the British government...

, and to the west Lord Berkeley was building Berkeley House, later Devonshire House

Devonshire House

Devonshire House in Piccadilly was the London residence of the Dukes of Devonshire in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was built for William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire in the Palladian style, to designs by William Kent...

.

Lord Clarendon acquired the 8 acres (3.2 ha) site for his house by royal grant in 1664. 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

Cupola

In architecture, a cupola is a small, most-often dome-like, structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome....

. 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

John Evelyn

John Evelyn was an English writer, gardener and diarist.Evelyn's diaries or Memoirs are largely contemporaneous with those of the other noted diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys, and cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time John Evelyn (31 October 1620 – 27 February...

 thought it was "the best contriv'd, the most useful, graceful and magnificent house in England". Three hundred years later, John Summerson

John Summerson

Sir John Newenham Summerson CH CBE was one of the leading British architectural historians of the 20th century....

 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

Belton House

Belton House is a Grade I listed country house in Belton near Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. The mansion is surrounded by formal gardens and a series of avenues leading to follies within a larger wooded park...

 in Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

, 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 has appropriated stone intended for repairs to St. Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire

Great Fire of London

The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...

 to build his house. That same year, on 14 June 1667, Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...

 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

Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle

Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle, KG, PC was an English statesman and failed soldier.He was the son of George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle....

 for £26,000, and in 1683, Albemarle resold it to a consortium of investors led by Sir Thomas Bond, the latter of whom demolished it and built Dover Street

Dover Street

Dover Street is a street in Mayfair, London, England. The street is notable for its Georgian architecture as well as the location of historic London clubs and hotels, which have been frequented by world leaders and historic figures in the arts. It also hosts a number of contemporary art galleries...

, Albemarle Street

Albemarle Street

Albemarle Street is a street in Mayfair in central London, off Piccadilly. It has historic associations with Lord Byron, whose publisher John Murray was based here, and Oscar Wilde, a member of the Albemarle Club, where an insult he received led to his suing for libel and to his eventual imprisonment...

, and Bond Street

Bond Street

Bond Street is a major shopping street in the West End of London that runs north-south through Mayfair between Oxford Street and Piccadilly. It has been a fashionable shopping street since the 18th century and is currently the home of many high price fashion shops...

 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

St. James's Street

St James's Street is one of the principal streets in the central London district of St James's. It runs from Piccadilly downhill to St James's Palace and Pall Mall...

.

External links

• Clarendon Estate, Victoria County History
  Victoria County History
  The Victoria History of the Counties of England, commonly known as the Victoria County History or the VCH, is an English history project which began in 1899 and was dedicated to Queen Victoria with the aim of creating an encyclopaedic history of each of the historic counties of...