Devonshire House
The house was later occupied by Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, one of the celebrated mistresses of King Charles II.
[1] On 16 October 1733, whilst undergoing refurbishment, the former Berkeley House was completely destroyed by fire, despite firefighting efforts by the Regiment of Guards, whose barracks were nearby, led by Willem van Keppel, 2nd Earl of Albemarle, and by other local troops led by Frederick, Prince of Wales.
[2] Ironically, the Duke's former London residence, Old Devonshire House, at 48 Boswell Street, Bloomsbury, survived both its successors until The Blitz during World War II.
[4] Kent was the protégé of the immensely cultivated 3rd Earl of Burlington and had worked on his Chiswick House, built in 1729, and also at Holkham Hall, completed circa 1741, both in the Palladian style and considered the epitome of fashion and sophistication.
[5] In typical Palladian style, Devonshire House consisted of a corps de logis flanked by service wings.
[7] However, the curiously flat exterior concealed Kent's sumptuous interiors which housed a large part of the Devonshire art collection, considered one of the finest in the United Kingdom,[8] and a renowned library,[9] housed in a room 40 ft long and including amongst its treasures Claude Lorraine's Liber Veritatis, his record in sketches of a lifetime of painting.
In the Duke's sitting room a glass case over the chimneypiece contained the best of his collection of engraved gems and Renaissance and Baroque medallions.
[12] At Devonshire House, Kent's exterior stairs led up to a piano nobile, where the entrance hall was the only room that rose through two storeys.
Enfilades of interconnecting rooms, of which the largest space is devoted to the library, flank central halls, adjusting the traditions of the symmetrical Baroque state apartments, a design which did not lend itself to large gatherings.
A few years later architects such as Matthew Brettingham pioneered a more compact design, with a suite of connecting reception rooms circling a central top-lit stair hall, which allowed guests to "circulate".
Alterations were made to Devonshire House by the architect James Wyatt, over the long period 1776–90,[15] and later by Decimus Burton, who in 1843 constructed a new portico, entrance hall and grand staircase for the 6th Duke.
[16] At that time the external double staircase was swept away, allowing for formal entrance to be made into the ground floor through the new portico.
The many portrait photographs taken at the ball have illustrated countless books on the social history of the late Victorian era.
[29] The two purchasers were Shurmer Sibthorpe and Lawrence Harrison, wealthy industrialists, who built on the site a hotel and block of flats.
"[30] In 1924-1926 Holland, Hannen & Cubitts built a new office building on the site, fronting directly onto Piccadilly, also known as "Devonshire House".
Apsley House remains a functioning possession of the Dukes of Wellington, but is mostly now a public museum on the edge of a busy roundabout, its gardens long gone (but not built over), with the family occupying the uppermost floor only.
