Somerset House

Somerset House. This ancient palace [the original Somerset House] was taken down in 1775, under the authority of an act of parliament, and the present handsome and extensive building, erected from the designs of Sir William Chambers. It occupies a length from east to west on the bank of the Thames of 800 feet in length, and 500 in depth from the Strand to the terrace. This area is divided into a large quadrangular court 340 feet long and 210 feet broad, with a street on the west side, and a second court on the east, now building for King's College, which is to occupy the eastern wing, and completes the elevation next the river. These communicate to a spacious terrace fifty feet in width, raised fifty feet above the bed of the river, and occupying the whole length of the building.

The elevation next the Strand is at once grand and simple. The ground story consists of nine arcades, the three middle ones of which are open, and lead to the court-yard, the three to the westward are occupied by the Royal Academy, and the three to the eastward by the Royal and Antiquarian Societies. The key stone of these arches are finely sculptured, by Wilton, into colossal masks, representing Ocean, and the eight chief rivers of Great Britain, namely, Thames, Humber, Mersey and Dee, westward of the centre, and Medway, Tweed, Tyne and Severn eastward. The upper stories are decorated with three-quarter columns of the Corinthian order, above which is an attic occupied by the great exhibition and lecture room of the Royal Academy, the entablature of which is supported by caryatides. The elevation of the quadrangle and the river are in a corresponding style of architecture with the rest, and it is, as a whole, one of the completest works of one architect in Europe. The style is Italian, in the purest mode, and refined to a degree scarcely excelled by Palladio himself.

The public offices contained in this splendid building are, in front, the Royal Academy, the Society of Antiquaries, and the Royal Society; on the south side of the quadrangle are, in the Stamp Office, the Navy Office, and the Navy Pay Office, which open also towards the terrace; on the east and west sides are the offices of the Auditor of the Exchequer, the Chancellors of the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster; the Hawkers' and Pedlers' Office; the Stage Coach Office; the Legacy Duty Office; the Privy Seal and Signet Office; and the revenue department of the Tax Offices.

When the eastern wing is completed, we may add the King's College to the preceding, which is now erecting from the designs, and under the superintendance of Mr. Smirke.

Somerset House, in the Strand (present building). A pile of public offices, erected between the years 1776 and 1786, on the site of the palace of the Protector Somerset. [See preceding article.] The architect was Sir William Chambers. The general proportions of the building are good, and some of the details of great elegance. The entrance archway or vestibule from the Strand has deservedly found many admirers.¹ The terrace elevation towards the Thames was made, like the Adelphi Terrace of the brothers Adam, in anticipation of the long projected embankment of the river, and is one of the noblest façades in London. The building is in the form of a quadrangle, with wings. The Strand front is 155 feet long, the river front 600 feet. The inner quadrangle is 319 by 224 feet. Wings have been added to Chambers's building; the east wing, which contains King's College, by Sir R. Smirke in 1828–1831; the west wing, devoted to the Inland Revenue Department, by Sir James Pennethorne in 1853. Observe—under the vestibule, on your left as you enter (distinguished by a bust of Sir Isaac Newton), the entrance doorway to the apartments formerly occupied by the Royal Society and Society of Antiquaries; Herschel and Watt, and Davy and Wollaston, and Walpole and Hallam have often entered by this door. Observe—under the same vestibule, on your right as you enter, the entrance doorway of the apartments, from 1780 to 1838, of the Royal Academy of Arts. Some of the best pictures of the English school have passed under this doorway to the great room of the yearly exhibition; and under the same doorway, and up the same steps, Reynolds, Wilkie, Flaxman and Chantrey have often passed. The last and best of Reynolds's Discourses were delivered, by Sir Joshua himself, in the great room of the Academy, at the top of the building. Somerset House is now wholly appropriated as Government offices. The principal are the Exchequer and Audit Department; the Probate Office; the Legacy Duty Office, where the several payments are made on bequests by wills of personal property; the Inland Revenue Office, where stamps are issued, and public taxes and excise duties received from the several district collectors; Accountant and Comptroller-General's Office; and the Registrar-General's Office is for the registration of the births, marriages, and deaths of the United Kingdom. In the basement are produced by steam and hand presses all the various stamps issued from the several Government departments, with the exception of the adhesive postage stamps, which are prepared by private firms. Here also is the Chemical Laboratory of the Inland Revenue Office. The bronze statue of George III. and figure of Father Thames, by John Bacon, R.A., cost £2000.

A little above the entrance door to the Stamps and Taxes is a white watch-face, regarding which the popular belief has been, and is, that it was left there by a labouring man who fell from a scaffold at the top of the building, and was only saved from destruction by the ribbon of his watch, which caught in a piece of projecting work. In thankful remembrance (so the story runs) of his wonderful escape, he afterwards desired that his watch might be placed as near as possible to the spot where his life had been saved. The story is utterly unfounded. The watch-face was placed where it is by the Royal Society as a meridian mark for a portable transit instrument in one of the windows of their ante-room.

To this account of Somerset House may be added a little circumstance of interest which Mr. Cunningham was told by an old clerk on the establishment of the Audit Office. "When I first came to this building," he said, "I was in the habit of seeing, for many mornings, a thin, spare, naval officer, with only one arm, enter the vestibule at a smart step, and make direct for the Admiralty, over the rough round stones of the quadrangle, instead of taking what others generally took, and continue to take, the smooth pavement at the sides. His thin, frail figure shook at every step, and I often wondered why he chose so rough a footway; but I ceased to wonder when I heard that the thin, frail officer was no other than Lord Nelson who always took," continued my informant, "the nearest way to the place he wanted to go to."

July 15, 1817.—Wrote some lines in the solitude of Somerset House, not fifty yards from the Thames on one side, and the Strand on the other; but as quiet as the sands of Arabia.—Crabbe's Journal.

But the record is wrongly dated by Crabbe: it should be Sunday the 13th, which explains the quiet.

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¹ The keystone masques of river deities on the Strand front were carved by Carlini and Wilton, two of the early Royal Academicians.