8^th November 2011 should see the re-opening of Hogarth’s house in Chiswick. It has been closed for renovations since 2008, the re-opening delayed by a fire in 2009 and by subsequent wrangling with insurers.

The house was built in the early 1700s and became a country home to William Hogarth and his family in 1749 – an escape from the hustle and bustle of their main house off the noisy area of what is now Leicester Square. An idea of the country tranquillity of the setting is shown in the picture published by his widow in 1781, some years after William had died. It shows the house across Chiswick Common.

  The house from the front

 and from the rear, showing the mulberry tree which Hogarth's family would harvest in order to make mulberry pie from the fruit.

Hogarth had extended the house in 1750 and also constructed a painting room over the coach house at the bottom of the garden (no man is happy without a den to call his own). Nowadays the house is maintained by the London Borough of Hounslow. It is their intention that when reopened the house will do far more than simply exhibit Hogarth’s pictures - it will show something of the life of the house through  the centuries. The Hounslow website is at http://www.hounslow.info/index.htm

According to the William Hogarth Trust site at http://williamhogarthtrust.org.uk/ the new displays will stress the home rather than just the paintings (which can after all be seen in many museums and galleries). Their site states:

"The new displays will include personal items from the Hogarth family which are coming on loan from other museum collections – when the House was last refurbished we were not aware of their existence. These include a little portable chest in which Hogarth kept his colours, his palette, his punchbowl and a mourning ring commemorating his wife, Jane. Visitors will also discover more about the ladies of the Hogarth household – not only Jane but her mother, Lady Thornhill, her cousin, Mary Lewis (to whom she left the House), Hogarth’s sister, Anne and family friend, Julian Bere, a wealthy spinster – who all lived together in Leicester Fields and in this house in Chiswick."

Hogarth carried his paint colours in this little cabinet (Aberdeen Art Gallery ag000103)

I look forward to viewing the house, which is just off the traffic-congested A4 into London from the West, when next visiting the capital. Meanwhile for Hogarth lovers I enjoyed the fascinating series of articles at Life Takes Lemons at http://lifetakeslemons.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/hogarths-harlots-progress-plate-6/  especially if you want a more detailed explanation of the minutiae shown in the plates in Harlots Progress. Also for a take on the modern scenes shown in the Rakes Progress there is an interesting post by Tony Grant at the excellent site called Jane Austen's World at http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/the-rakes-progress-by-william-hogarth/

And why the post today? Because Hogarth died 247 years ago, this day 26th October 1764. Rest peacefully William, for in 2 weeks time the tourists invade your home again in their thousands!

The house lumbered on into the 1900s. Not all Premiers actually lived in it as their home, though most liked to be seen entering and leaving it since it was already firmly established in the public mind as “the place where the Prime Minister lived”. For some it was ‘an occasional residence and otherwise office’ but by the 1950s it was obvious that something urgent was needed if it were to survive. Harold Macmillan commissioned a report. It made gloomy reading, with rampant dry rot and insect infestation of all woodwork. The main staircase had dropped by several inches, and the upper floors were in such a dangerous state that the number of people using it had to be limited.

Worse was revealed when work commenced to the foundations. These had apparently been laid upon giant oak beams. These had rotted and new footings had to be dug out to a depth of between six and eighteen feet, and then filled with steel and concrete. Wherever possible the original features were taken away for conservation and repair – or so that replicas could be faithfully made. Even so, at least  60% of the building was brand new. Ahead of the works being carried out The Times had reported that the repairs might cost £400,000. In practice it came to nearer three million pounds, exacerbated by endless strikes and interruptions. In many cases the new rooms were restored exactly to match the old ones. Dozens and dozens of layers of paint were removed from cornices, revealing their original splendour. Outside, the original brick work was found to be yellow, not black as it appeared for centuries, and hastily had to be blackened to give the appearance the public were used to seeing!

                                         

And the famous door with the number 10? Well it hasn’t been the old six-panelled oak structure since 1991 when the IRA tried to mortar bomb it. The present door is made of blast-proof steel, the zero in 10 being set an a slight angle to replicate the original, badly fixed, numerals.

  The Cabinet Room at Number 10 (Crown Copyright).

The renovation was overseen by Raymond Erith. He had to contend with endless cost-cutting changes imposed on him by the Treasury, and he ended up bitterly disappointed with the result. It was a bodge-up. His concerns were fully justified and by the 1960s further outbreaks of dry rot were discovered to have been caused by a broken pipe and inadequate damp-proofing works. Cue more builders, more estimates and repairs undertaken throughout the sixties, seventies and finally eighties, and eventually we get the building we all know and love today. Long may it last, and long may it commemorate a disreputable rogue who has attained a rare achievement - he has made the incumbents of his building look less odious than he was himself!

Postscript: this week the Royal Mail launched a set of stamps featuring famous U.K. landmarks  including one of Number 10 Downing Street, pictured here. It is just about the only thing 'first class' about Number 10 which I can think of! 

In an earlier post I gave the background to the life of Sir George Downing – spymaster, developer, turncoat and acute businessman. But what of the house which bears his name, one of the most famous addresses in the world?

What we know as 10 Downing Street is really made up of three separate houses – ‘the House at the Back’ being a mansion house which originally enjoyed a fine prospect over St James’s Park, a townhouse to the rear of it (once known as Number 5 but later becoming known as Number 10) and a cottage next door. The parts with a frontage on to Downing Street were constructed by Sir George Downing between 1682 and 1684. His plan had been to build houses ‘for persons of good quality to inhabit’(or so he said; in practice he built them to a poor standard as a cheap terrace, built without proper foundations on thin sandy soil).

Poor Sir George – he had failed in his attempt through the Courts to get rid of the tenant in the House at the Back, and this meant he had to wait nearly thirty years for vacant possession enabling him to redevelop the site as a whole. In practice he died before the development of perhaps 15 houses in a quiet cul-de-sac was finished. Apparently he used Christopher Wren as his architect. The houses were thrown up quickly and not to a very high standard – a cheese-paring attempt at cost-saving which has proved highly expensive to the British Taxpayer ever since! Even the fronts were not made of proper brick-work – lines were painted on to the render to make it look like courses of brick and mortar.

 
The Old Palace at Whitehall by Hendrick Danckerts, with the House at the Back on the extreme right.

The House at the Back had a history going back to around 1530. It was originally part of a group of buildings known as Cockpit Lodgings (a reference to the octagonal shaped building next door, used for cock fighting). It was previously occupied by Thomas Knevett (credited with having foiled the gunpowder Plot by capturing Guido Fawkes). It then became a royal residence, and for a while Princess Elizabeth lived there (she was the grandmother of a boy who later became the Elector of Hanover, and hence eventually assumed the Crown of England as George I). Subsequent inhabitants included the First Duke of Albermarle, Lord of the Treasury between 1660 and 1671. He was Downing’s immediate boss, and was followed in 1671 George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham. He refurbished the whole of The House at the Back, making it a pleasant mansion with fine views over the park, but situated immediately adjacent to the Palace of Whitehall.

 In 1676 Lady Charlotte, illegitimate daughter of King Charles, moved in and decided it needed another complete overhaul. In fact she added a third storey to the top of the building so that it consisted of three main floors, an attic and a basement. It may well have been the case that some of the repairs and renovations which she had carried out were necessitated by the fact that this property (like Number Ten) had insufficient foundations on the soft soil.

            Charlotte, Countess of Lichfield  by Sir Peter Lely

Come the Revolution and Charlotte went off to the continent with her husband and the house reverted to the Crown. It was occupied by various dignitaries, all of whom complained about the ruinous state of the property. In 1722 the Treasury authorized the sum of £2,522 to be paid for repairs and improvements (the equivalent today of well over two hundred thousand pounds). The work included: “The Back passage into Downing street to be repaired and a new door; a New Necessary House to be made; To take down the Useless passage formerly made for the Maids of Honour to go into Downing Street, when the Queen lived at the Cockpit; To New Cast a great Lead Cistern & pipes and to lay the Water into the house & a new frame for ye Cistern.”

Count Bothner, envoy from Hanover and advisor to the first two Hanoverian Kings, took up residency in 1720 and  lived there until his death in 1732.It was then that George II hit upon  the idea of gifting the whole group of buildings to the First Lord of the Treasury i.e. Lord Walpole. It was originally intended as a personal gift but Walpole would only accept it if it was for the benefit of successive title holders. 

 Sir Robert Walpole, First Lord of the Treasury  

Walpole persuaded a Mr Chicken, who had the tenancy of the small cottage adjoining Number 10, to move out so that a corridor could be constructed between the two parts. In turn these were linked to the House at the Back by the construction of a two-storey structure consisting of one long room on the ground floor, and several smaller rooms above. The work was overseen by William Kent as architect, and he provided for a large courtyard using the remaining interior space between the buildings. He also closed the north side door leading on to St James’s Park and made the door opening out on to the Downing Street frontage the main door and access-way. The entire interior was gutted and re-fashioned to the standards then prevailing. But for all this work, no-one thought to spend one penny on the footings….

On 23 September 1735, the London Daily Post announced that: “Yesterday, the Right Hon. Sir Robert Walpole, with his Lady and Family moved from their House in St James's Square, to his new House adjoining to the Treasury in St. James's Park”. Their new residence had some sixty rooms, and Walpole stayed there for seven years. The next five Treasury Lords took one look at the place and declined to move in, preferring to keep their own rather grander homes. It was William Pitt the Younger who made the place his own – he lived there for a total of 21 years, but not without branding it as “my vast awkward house”

 William Pitt died in 1806, and his death marked a long period of decline for the old building.

In some ways we may think it rather appropriate that the London home of the Prime Minister is in Downing Street, a place named after a man who was notorious as a spy, an opportunist, and a money-grabbing turncoat.

George Downing was born in Dublin in 1624 into a staunchly puritan family. He emigrated to the American colonies with his parents when he was 14 and when the Civil War broke out he decided to return to Britain, working his passage on board  ship as a preacher. He arrived in England in 1646, determined to help the cause of the Parliamentarians and joined the army of Sir Thomas Fairfax, initially as a chaplain. He decided to follow a more military calling and in 1649 Oliver Cromwell sent him north into Scotland to act as a spy. He was given the rank of Scout Master General (equivalent to a Major General) and was wounded in the Battle of Dunbar in 1650. Four years later saw his marriage to a ‘lady greatly distinguished for beauty’ namely Frances, the 21 year old sister of the Earl of Carlisle, and daughter of Sir William Howard. The connection afforded a further boost to his career and Cromwell sent him to France to spy on the Royalists who had fled to the Continent after the execution of Charles I.

By now Downing had been elected to Parliament and, as an MP, needed a London base. He bought the interest of the Crown in some land and buildings known as Hampden House and Peacock Court at Axe Yard King Street in Whitehall. Here he became friends with the likes of John Milton, (Paradise Lost), and Arthur Haslerig, (parliamentary leader).

By now on a salary of £1000 a year, he was asked to embark on a diplomatic career, based at The Hague in Holland, and this provided him with further opportunities to spy and report on the activities of royalists in exile. He mediated in various disputes and generally made sure that he was well rewarded for his efforts. Armed with an unusual skill – sign language (which he learnt by virtue of having attended a school for the congenitally deaf in Kent) he employed a veritable army of deaf people to assist him in garnering information from those around him. The deaf servants acted as pick-pockets and spies – feloniously acquiring keys and private documents.  Downing quickly developed a reputation as a man who spent more time in espionage than he did in diplomacy: he was feared by everyone.

A cartouche of the Downing coat of arms above the date 1673, incised above the door of St Denis Church, East Hatley, Cambs.

When Oliver Cromwell died, Downing remained in post during Richard Cromwell’s protectorship but events in 1660, when Charles II came to power, necessitated a swift epiphany. He announced that he had suddenly seen the error of his ways; that he had been led astray while he was in Massachusetts as a youngster. His change of heart was emphasised when he alerted  Charles, before he returned to England to claim the crown, of an assassination attempt. Charles became king and rewarded his ‘loyal servant’ with a knighthood – and promptly gave him back his old job in Holland. Swiftly he denounced his erstwhile colleagues, and three of the signatories of the ‘regicide’ deed were captured and sent to the gallows. Downing was appointed a Teller of the Receipts of the Exchequer, a post which appeared to allow vast funds to attach themselves to his sticky fingers. He acquired estate after estate throughout Cambridge. He picked up a baronetcy in 1663 and became involved in the overhaul of the Treasury and the way parliament provided funds for the Crown.

Subsequent service to the country included talking the Dutch into handing over New Amsterdam (now New York), and using his influence to see to it that Parliament passed the Navigation Acts. These helped underwrite English commercial and Naval power, and contributed to the security of the State and its ability to promote its interests worldwide.The guy was unstoppable. After the Great Fire of London property speculation became the order of the day. Downing wished to redevelop his property in Whitehall and in vain tried to winkle out the tenant (the Hampden family) but in the end had to wait for the tenancy to expire in 1682. Downing submitted plans for the construction of a cul de sac containing more than a score of three-storey terraced houses. They were intended as prestigious residences (in practice it may not be a surprise to hear that they were jerry built). In his modesty he called the road Downing Street. In practice he never lived to see the development finished off – he died in 1684 and building work finished two years later. Fast forward to 1732 and the properties had passed to the Crown. George II decided to give the buildings comprising 10, 11 and 12 Downing Street to Robert Walpole in his capacity of First Lord of the Treasury. Walpole only accepted the gift as long as it was not personal to him, but was to his successors as well. It was  intended that the First Lord of the Treasury (i.e. the Prime Minister) would reside at Number 10 and his Chancellor in the adjoining Number 11 Downing Street.  This then was the arrangement applying to the address throughout the time Richard Hall was a child.

Downing had made enemies at every turn. Samuel Pepys, at one time his secretary, found him odious and mean and denounced him as a 'perfidious rogue'. The other famous diarist of the age John Evelyn complained that the man was “ a great traitor against his Majestie but now insinuated into his favour, & from a pedagoge & fanatic preachr, not worth a groate, becoming excessive rich.“

Downing Street courtesy of Wikipedia

The story of the actual buildings will be the basis of a separate post, but it is certainly ironic that the name of Downing lives on at the very heart of British politics. He was an able administrator, a capable reformer of the Treasury, but also a man entirely lacking in a moral compass. A rogue, a traitor, a miser and a  relentless opportunist, it is small wonder that for years the expression ‘doing a George Downing’ was synonymous with shady dealing and corruption.

Devotees of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey* will recognize the description of "the finest place in England" as applying to Blaise Castle House, at Henbury on the outskirts of Bristol. The description may be a tad over-generous, but the house is a fine building, constructed in the final years of the Eighteenth Century, to the design of William Paty.

                             Blaise Castle House (Wikipedia).

Somehow it looks better from a distance, with a filter:

The house belonged to John Harford, a wealthy Quaker landowner, merchant, and banker.He had made his fortune in Bristol, became a staunch abolitionist and was a close friend of William Wilberforce (indeed, he wrote his biography). The grounds of the house include the castle which gives the place its name - although in fact this was a sham, or folly, constructed around 1766 in the Gothic style.

 The castle (Wikipedia)

Harford was determined to do all he could to look after his estate-workers when they grew old and infirm.In his own words he wanted to provide "retreats for aged persons who had moved in respectable walks of life but had fallen under misfortunes, preserving little or nothing in the shock of adversity but unblemished character.”

To this end in 1809-11 he constructed Blaise Hamlet for his workers, and the nine cottages around a village green still exist and are maintained by the National Trust. Visitors can see the outside of the houses (but not the interiors as they are all occupied). Rose Cottage is apparently available to rent  from the National Trust as a holiday cottage.The whole group have a delightful fairy-tale atmosphere of idealized beauty, with Jacobean chimneys emerging from thatched roof-lines, a communal pump and a sundial, diamond-glass windows,dovecotes and seating areas in the shade. Each cottage is different.

The architect chosen for the Blaise Hamlet project was John Nash – better known for his work on Regent Street, Buckingham Palace and the Brighton Pavilion. How he must have relished the change in having a tiny commission, where his brief was to produce homes in the picturesque style, for working people to live in, rather than some ‘whipped cream edifice’ for the rich to play in!

Portrait of John Nash, an architect forever associated with the Prince Regent. Indeed when his benefactor (by then George IV) died, Nash fellt out of favour and died on the Isle of Wight in 1835

 The house known as Circular Cottage, Blaise Hamlet, with the pillar sundial on the left.(Wikipedia).

 Oak Cottage, Blaise  (Wikipedia).

  ©National Trust

There is a certain irony in the fact that all nine cottages are Grade 1 Listed Buildings, whereas Blaise Castle House, and the nearby castle, merirt a Grade II.

                            

More details can be found at the National Trust's own website at http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-blaisehamlet

Harford commissioned Humphry Repton to design and landscape the gardens to Blaise Castle House. He produced one of his famous 'Red books' for Blaise in 1796.

Blaise Castle, a watercolour by Humphry Repton from his Red Book for Blaise.

Harford continued to live at Blaise until his death on 16 April 1866. As he was born on 8th October (in 1785) I wish him many happy returns of the day!

Blaise House is now run by Bristol City Council as a Museum. Details appear on their website at http://www.bristol.gov.uk/page/blaise-castle-house-museum

*Jane Austen writes

“Blaize Castle!” cried Catherine; “what is that?”

“The finest place in England – worth going fifty miles at any time to see.”

“What, is it really a castle, an old castle?”

“The oldest in the kingdom.”

“But is it like what one reads of?”

“Exactly – the very same.”

“But now really – are there towers and long galleries?”

“By dozens.”

Jane knew, and expected her readers to know, that the description of the castle was an exaggeration, and that it was simply a device to get the characters interested in starting a lengthy carriage journey, from the far side of Bath to the opposite side of Bristol (a distance in excess of twenty miles each way).  The readers would know full well that a forty mile trip in the day in the barouche was never to be countenanced, and the party turn back, their journey incomplete.

We may all be familiar with the present Somerset House, in all its neo-classical finery. It was built to the 1775 design of Sir William Chambers, and constructed in the last quarter of the 18th Century, but what of the Somerset House which preceded it?

The building which was pulled down in the 1770s to make way for Chambers’ ‘place of national splendour’ was by then a sorry reminder of its bygone glories. The building had been left to deteriorate badly. It had been used as grace-and-favour apartments (where no-one had any incentive to carry out improvements or even basic repairs) and it had been a store and a barracks for the military. It is in this state that my 4xgreat grandfather would have known the site throughout the time he was living in London (1729 up until 1780 when he upped sticks and went to live in the country). But in its heyday Somerset House had been a grand palace, built in 1547 for Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset. It contained fine renaissance gardens, separating the house from the Thames (the fountain from it now stands in Bushy Park).  

The house was of two storeys constructed around a quadrangle, and with a large and imposing three storey gatehouse. Poor Somerset never actually got to live there – he fell out of favour and was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1552. The building passed to the Crown and Princess Elizabeth lived there for some years during the reign of her half-sister Mary, before she ascended the throne in 1558.

  
A view of the sprawling Somerset House in the 1720s, at the time of the birth of Richard Hall, from a drawing by Jan Kip.

It remained a royal palace for most of the Seventeenth Century, being home to Queen Anne of Denmark (wife of James I) when it was known as Denmark House. She instituted various changes involving Inigo Jones and he continued with these alterations when Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I, moved in. Between 1630 and 1635 Inigo Jones had built a chapel where the Catholic queen could practice her Faith, overseen by the Capuchin Order. 

When the Civil War brought Cromwell to power a decision was made to sell the place, but no buyer could be found. Parliament therefore flogged the entire contents, raising the not inconsiderable sum of £118,000, and handed the place over as an HQ for the army. General Fairfax had his official residence there as did a number of prominent Parliamentarians. And it was to Somerset House that the body of Oliver Cromwell was taken after he died in 1658.

Come the Restoration and the place came back into royal favour. Many alterations were made, again following the designs of Inigo Jones, and the palace became the home to Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II. In 1685 Sir Christopher Wren was persuaded to add his sixpenn’orth to the old building by refurbishing its interior. Shortly afterwards Charles II died, and by 1692 the connection with the royal queens came to an end. As its condition deteriorated Somerset House no longer was a place of grandeur, and by the time George III came to the throne in 1760 there was no way he could persuade his consort (Queen Charlotte) to move in. She took one look at it and wisely persuaded her husband to go off and buy Buckingham House, where she could raise their multitudinous offspring in surroundings more appropriate to their status.

A view of the old Somerset House painted between 1746 and 1750 by Canaletto, shown courtesy of www.canelettogallery.org

And here is another Canaletto showing the view of the river from Somerset House...

The year: 1661

The season: high summer

The place: Upper St James Park (now Green Park)

The occasion: a few drinkies on the Terrace to impress  friends, courtiers and ambassadors.

In attendance: King Charles II , knocking back a few vol au vents and ostentatiously clinking his glass to draw attention to the ice rattling round.

Picture courtesy of http://www.andybrain.com/

Ice in the summer? Yes, thanks to the ice house which the king had commissioned to be built immediately after his return to England the year before. In this he was following in the footsteps of his grandfather James I who had built an ice house in Greenwich in 1619 and another at Hampton Court five years later. But  come the revolution and fripperies like iced drinks, chilled sorbets and summer ice creams went out of favour with those killjoy Puritans, and it was left to the new King to revive the tradition.

 It certainly impressed the poet Edmund Waller  in 1661 when he eulogised:

ON ST JAMES'S PARK (As lately improved by His Majesty)

Yonder the harvest of cold months laid up,
Gives a fresh coolness to the royal cup,
There ice, like crystal, firm and never lost,
Tempers hot July with December's frost;
Winter's dark prison, whence he cannot fly,
Tho' the warm spring, his enemy draws nigh:
Strange! That extremes should thus preserve the snow,
High on the Alpes or in deep caves below. 

The King’s subjects were also  mightily impressed (with the ice house, if not the poem) and went back to their stately piles determined to emulate the royal example. Over  the course of the Eighteenth Century many ice houses were built, often to the same basic design. The King James’ version was little more than a well, 30 feet deep and 16 feet wide, brick-lined and covered with a thatched structure. In the winter ice would be collected from ponds and lakes and piled into the well and then covered with straw. Later versions were commonly brick-lined, domed structures, constructed mostly underground. They were often conical or rounded at the bottom to hold melted ice, and more elaborate ones were paved at the bottom, with a drain to carry away the melt-water.

Ponds were often created artificially, close to the gated entrance of the ice house, to enable the labourers to load the structure during the deepest part of winter. It must have been a thoroughly unpleasant and arduous task man-handling sheets of ice and shovelled snow into the dank, dark structure, alternating it with layers of straw. Some of the structures had successive chambers linked by passages to a central ice vault, and apparently they could be extremely efficient, with the majority of the ice making it through to the summer so as to be used for ice sculptures, chilling drinks, making sorbets and so on.

By the end of the Georgian era many ice houses were being constructed  on the basis of the design of John Buonarotti Papworth. He was one of the founder members of the Royal Institute of British Architects and published this icehouse design in 1816.  

 Papworth's Design

    

In 1780 Richard notes in his diary that he went to see the pictures at 'the new Royal Academy'. Clearly impressed with the building he bought a print (see above)  showing the 'Back front' (?!) and stuck it on to on old piece of vellum to make a sort of wallet in which he could keep papers etc. It is still in use for the same purpose 230 years later.

It was called the 'new' Royal Academy because the original was housed in cramped quarters in Pall Mall. The Academy had been founded by George III in December 1768 to meet the demands for  the creation of a national school of art with suitable training being given to artists so that they achieved an acceptable standard i.e. in accordance with prevailing notions of good taste. The Academy was also intended to promote annual exhibitions of the work of those artists who were at the pinnacle of their powers. Sir Joshua Reynolds was the first President, and there were 34 founder members including Thomas Gainsborough. Young artists who benefited from the training afforded by the Academy included the likes of  JMW Turner, John Constable, William Blake and  Edwin Landseer. Twenty-five students a year were accepted and were expected to complete a seven year training (raised to ten years in 1800).

Drawing from Life at the Royal Academy by Rowlandson & Pugin, 1808,  from the Microcosm of London

But if the Academy was to succeed in breaking the stranglehold of European painters on contemporary ideas of good taste it needed premises which could showcase English talent - yet in 1771 it moved its base to Old Somerset House, a building severely in the doldrums and otherwise used for storage, for putting up troops, and for housing foreign visitors to the Court. Demolition of the old Tudor building known as Somerset House started in 1775.

Edmund Burke led the cry for a building of national importance to be constructed and in 1775 Parliament passed an Act aimed at "erecting and establishing Publick Offices in Somerset House, and for embanking Parts of the River Thames ....". The Public Offices were to include homes for such diverse bodies as the Stamp Office, the Navy Office, the Public Lottery Office and the Hawkers and Peddlars Office. And so it was that Sir William Chambers was appointed Surveyor-General of Works at the new Somerset House at an annual salary of £2000. 

The work was not completed until after the death of Chambers but the Strand entrance was finished in 1780 and the Royal Academy took up residence.

So what would Richard have seen when he visited Somerset House in 1780? It would have been very different from the art exhibitions at the Foundling Hospital, where William Hogarth displayed his works - and different too from the paintings shown in the supper booths at Spring Gardens (re-named Vauxhall Gardens) which Richard also visited in 1780.

 

At the Academy the pictures were hung with barely an inch between canvasses - a style echoed in most galleries and private houses at the time. 

Rudolf Ackerman's sketch of the Summer Exhibition at the Academy, from 1808
(taken from the Microcosm of London).

In 1837 the Academy moved again, into premises already occupied by the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. The two institutions were uneasy bed-fellows because space was limited. By 1868 the Academy was on the move again, into its present premises at Burlington House.

Over the years the Academy has moved its premises five times and changed the way its pictures are displayed - but it has managed to maintain the tradition of a Summer Exhibition in an unbroken sequence since 1769.

Buckingham House pictured in 1710

The site of Buckingham Palace has had connections with the Royal family since  the Norman Conquest.  King James Ist had planted four acres of mulberry trees on part of the present site of the royal palace, intending to develop the English silk industry. By the start of the Eighteenth Century most of the land, with the exception of the mulberry plantation, was in the hands of the First Duke of Buckingham and Normandy, and in 1703  he commissioned the construction of his new home under the direction of architect William Winde. It forms the core of today’s palace, with a main three-storey frontage and two smaller wings at either side

When Buckingham House, as it was then known, passed into the hands of Buckingham’s descendant Sir Charles Sheffield it was impossible for  Sheffield  to prise the freehold  of the mulberry gardens from the Royal family. Instead Sheffield  sold the house (for the princely sum of £21000)  to George III a year after he came to the throne. George wanted it as a home for his wife Charlotte. Indeed it was known as the Queen’s House and that is where she gave birth to 14 out  of her 15 children. George meanwhile continued to use St James’s Palace as the Royal residence as had his predecessors.

 St James’s Palace, where Georges I, II and III lived, from a picture by Jan Kip dated 1715

George III made a few alterations to the building, spending £73,000 on modifications to make it more suitable for his royal brood. Rather more changes were implemented by his son George IV in 1826, who employed the architect John Nash to oversee the work. The cost of those alterations, designed to make the building into a proper palace, came to nearly half a million pounds. One of the changes included the construction of a huge triumphal arch to celebrate  victory at the Battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo. George IV died before the works were finished – as indeed did his successor William IV.Hence it was only when  Victoria took up occupation after her coronation in in 1837 that it became  the official residence of the monarch. Victoria saw Buckingham Palace, as it then became known, modified and extended into the building we know today. It was Victoria who had the triumphal arch (Marble Arch) moved to its present site at the corner of Hyde Park. This enabled her to build a fourth wing, making the building a quadrangle, with improved facilities for her young family.

According to the official website of the British Monarchy at  http://www.royal.gov.uk/ the palace  nowadays has 775 rooms including 19 state rooms,52 royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms and an impressive 78 bathrooms as well as 92 offices. The gardens of the palace are extensive, enabling the monarch to host garden parties each summer, and giving me a chance to indulge in a photograph of the gorgeous  Emma (O.K., so she's my daughter...) at the palace earlier this year. 

 

But in the lifetime of Richard Hall, 1729 to 1801, the building was still at its  heart Buckingham House.

This was the picture of the building in 1808 by Rudolf Ackermann from The Microcosm of London