James' Great Marlborough Street Home

In James Hervey d'Egville's October 1814 letter to François Joseph Talma he gives his address as 49 Great Marlborough Street. The house was demolished in 1953 by which time it had become number 54. A desciption of the house has survived.

According to the ratebooks the occupants of thehouse included: Lady Winchilsea, widow of Charles Finch, the fourth Earl, 1716; Lord Compton, 1717–24 (? James, Baron Compton,later the fifth Earl of Northampton); the Duchessof Northumberland, 1726–8 (the 'Countess' in 1726); General Compton, 1729–40; CharlesCompton, 1741–55 (? the father of the seventh Earl of Northampton); Sir Piercy Brett, 1768–1781; Lady Brett, 1782–8; Mr. and Mrs.William Siddons, the actress and her husband,1790–1804.

No. 54 was demolished in 1953. It was a large house with a plan divided by internal walls into four compartments (fig. 52). The front room,three windows wide, was west of the staircase hall,two windows wide and two storeys high. Behind the front room was a room of similar size but having two windows and a corner fireplace. The top-lit service stair was at the back of the mains taircase, leaving space for a small back room, or closet. The front was four storeys high, the attic being an addition, and five windows wide. The originally plain brick face had been dressed with cement to provide a horizontally jointed face to the ground storey, and moulded architraves to the first- and second-floor windows. The cornice below the attic was probably original and was aligned with that on the fronts of Nos. 51–52. The finest internal feature was the staircase, which before alteration rose in three flights, short, long,short, round an oblong well to a gallery landing on the first floor (Plate 142a, fig. 53). In its general details the balustrade resembled others in the street, including No. 12 on the north side, inhaving fluted Corinthian column newels, turned and twisted balusters, and carved bracket stepends. Here, however, the balustrade of the shortfirst flight was swept out in a bold quadrant curve,and the face of the landing gallery was treated asan entablature, having an enriched architrave and an ogee-profiled frieze carved with scrolled foliage and, beneath the central newel, a draped female head. (ref. 107)

From: 'Great Marlborough Street Area', Survey of London: volumes 31 and 32: St James Westminster, Part 2 (1963), pp. 250-267. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=41476  Date accessed: 19 April 2011.