Berkeley House

Names

Berkeley House

Street/Area/District

Piccadilly

Maps & Views

Descriptions

from London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, by Henry Benjamin Wheatley and Peter Cunningham (1891)

Berkeley House, Piccadilly, stood where Devonshire House now stands, on the site of a farm called "Hay Hill Farm," a name still preserved in the surrounding streets. It was designed about the year 1665 by Hugh May (the brother of Bap. May), for John, Lord Berkeley of Stratton (d. 1678), the hero of Stratton fight, one of the minor battles of the Civil War under Charles I. The gardens were very extensive, including Berkeley Square and the grounds now attached to Lansdowne House, as well as those belonging to Devonshire House.

May 22, 1666.—Waited on my Lord Chancellor at his new palace, and Lord Berkeley's built next to it.—Evelyn.

September 25, 1672.—I din'd at Lord John Berkeley's, newly arrived out of Ireland, where he had been Deputy: it was in his new house, or rather palace, for I am assured it stood him in neere £30,000. It is very well built, and has many noble roomes, but they are not very convenient, consisting but of one Corps de Logis: they are all roomes of state, without clossets. The staire-case is of cedar; the furniture is princely; the kitchen and stables are ill-placed, and the corridore worse, having no report to the wings they joyne to. For the rest, the fore-court is noble; so are the stables; and above all, the gardens, which are incomparable by reason of the inequalitie of the ground, and a pretty piscina. The holly hedges on the terrace I advised the planting of. The porticos are in imitation of a house described by Palladio, but it happens to be the worst in his booke; though my good friend, Mr. Hugh May, his Lordship's architect, effected it.—Evelyn.

In his Life of Mrs. Godolphin, Evelyn describes Berkeley House as "one of the most magnificent pallaces of the Towne."

June 12, 1684.—I went to advise and give directions about the building two streetes in Berkeley Gardens, reserving the house and as much of the garden as the breadth of the house. In the meanetime, I could not but deplore that sweete place (by far the most noble gardens, courts, and accommodations, stately porticoes, etc., anywhere about towne) should be so much straightened and turned into tenements. But that magnificent pile and gardens contiguous to it, built by the late Lord Chancellor Clarendon, being all demolished, and designed for piazzas and buildings, was some excuse for my Lady Berkeley's resolution of letting out her ground also for so excessive a price as was offered, advancing neere £1000 per ann. in mere ground-rents; to such a mad intemperance was the age come of building about a citty by far too disproportionate already to the nation; I having, in my time, seene it almost as large again as it was within my memory.—Evelyn.

When the Princess Anne, afterwards Queen Anne, was driven from the Cockpit at Whitehall by her sister, who could not prevail on her to part with the Duchess of Marlborough¹ (then only Lady M.), she took up her abode in Berkeley House, where she remained till her sister's death, when St. James's Palace was settled upon her by King William III.

"And now," writes the Duchess of Marlborough, " it being publicly known that the quarrel was made up, nothing was to be seen but crowds of people of all sorts, flocking to Berkeley House, to pay their respects to the Prince and Princess: a sudden alteration which, I remember, occasioned the half-witted Lord Caernarvon to say one night to the Princess, as he stood close by her in the Circle, 'I hope your Highness will remember that I came to wait upon you, when none of this company did': which caused a great deal of mirth."—Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough, ed. 1742, p. 60.

Berkeley House was bought¹ by the first Duke of Devonshire, who had so great a hand in the Revolution of 1688. The duke died here in 1707. The house (the staircase of which was painted by Laguerre) was destroyed by fire, October 16, 1733,² and rebuilt as now seen (the new portico and marble staircase excepted) from designs by William Kent, for William Cavendish, third Duke of Devonshire. John Vander Vaart (d. 1721) painted a violin against a door of this house, that is said by Walpole to have deceived everybody. The violin escaped the fire, and is now at Chatsworth.