Chesterfield House, Westminster

The French travel writer Pierre-Jean Grosley in his book Londres (1770, translated as Tour to London) considered the house to be equal to the hotels particuliers of the nobility in Paris.

The walls are covered half-way up with rich and classical stores of literature; above the cases are in close series the portraits of eminent authors, French and English, with most of whom he had conversed; over these, and immediateley under the massive cornice, extend all round, in foot long capitals, the Horatian lines: "NUNC .

On the mantelpieces and cabinets stand busts of old orators, interspersed with voluptuous vases and bronzes, antique or Italian, and airy statuettes, in marble or alabaster, of nude or semi-nude opera nymphs.The columns of the screen facing the courtyard and the marble staircase with bronze balustrade came from Cannons, near Edgware, the mansion of James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (d.1744) which was demolished shortly after his death, the materials being sold at auction in 1747.

Chesterfield also furnished his new mansion with artefacts from the sale at Houghton Hall, the country house of Robert Walpole, including an 18-candle copper-gilt lantern.

Passing from the porter's lodge across a noble court paved with stones, and entering the hall, the visitor cannot fail to be struck by the grand marble staircase, up and down which the great Chandos must have walked when it stood beneath his own palatial roof at Canons.

And, apart from historical traditions, it is really a staircase for ideas to mount, especially when one is met on its first landing, not only by busts of Pitt and Fox, but by a lofty clock, apparently of antique French construction, and which looks as though it had, at some time or other, chimed out the hours at Versailles.

In one of the apartments – another drawing room to which this French salon leads – hangs a large chandelier, formed of pendant crystal, which once belonged to Napoleon I.

In another room, not far from the library, one seems to gain an idea of the noble letter-writer's daily life, for we can still see its ante-chamber, in which the aspirants for his lordship's favour were sometimes kept waiting.

Faced with the prospect of demolition in 1869, the house was purchased by the City merchant Charles Magniac, for a reported sum of £175,000.