History
GARRICK HOUSE: NOS.27-32 KING STREET
KING STREET was constructed in the 1630s and named after the monarch of the day, Charles I. According to John Timbs's Curiosities of London: ‘In King Street lived the lady for whom mahogany was first used in England'. Although a few of the houses still sport doors of solid mahogany, all the original dwellings have gone.
This area's development was of great importance to London's history, it being the first suburb built outside the City of London to be regulated by building covenants and financed by the leasehold system. These factors, and its architectural pattern, attributed to Inigo Jones, made Covent Garden a prototype to which landlords and developers have aspired ever since. Charles II granted a royal charter to the Russell family, earls and dukes of Bedford, to develop the area and to establish here a market for fruit and vegetables and, later, flowers. The Russells retained ownership until 1914 when in an act of profound misjudgment, Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford, invested the entire proceeds of the sale in Czarist War Bonds. The present Duke says: ‘I think we still have a few of them somewhere, in an old tin box. They're worthless.'
Garrick House takes its name from the English actor, David Garrick [1717-1779] who lodged briefly on this site, at No.27 King Street, in 1748, a decade after having walked to London from his native Lincolnshire in company with another local boy who also found fame in the capital, Dr. Samuel Johnson. Garrick began his long theatrical career with a highly acclaimed performance as Richard III in 1741. His natural form of acting contrasted with the ludicrously exaggerated styles of the day. As manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, from 1747 to 1776, he introduced innovations in production, lighting and scenery.
Nos.27 & 28 King Street have matching fronts and since 1858 have been occupied virtually in common, or by closely related institutions. Both were put up about 1760, probably by the bricklayer, George Hoare of Cannon Street, London, in association with ‘Joshua Cox of Gray's Inn, gentleman'. Hoare and Cox then sold the freehold of No.27 to Joseph and John Harris and Thomas King, who carried on here the trade of mercers. This firm got into difficulties and at least one of its partners may have gone bankrupt because on 7-8 October 1808 No.27 was sold for £5,500 to the Westminster Fire Office, whose partners carried out extensive alterations to designs by their surveyor, J.G. Mayhew. One of the tradesmen involved in these alterations was a humble carpenter and joiner named Jeffry Wyatt, better known today as the architect, Sir Jeffry Wyatville [1766-1840] who designed the Round Tower at Windsor Castle. To celebrate the completion of the work the tradesmen dined with the directors of the Westminster Fire Office.
Further alterations, and a re-fronting, were undertaken by the directors of the Westminster Fire Office in the 1850s when No.27 became associated with No.28. The handsome neo-classical fronts in painted stucco still show strong Regency influences. The windows of the three upper storeys reflect the original separation of the sites. The most striking feature of the front is the large and splendidly vigorous cartouche of arms, with a wreathed portcullis surmounted by the Prince of Wales's Feathers. This replaces the centre window in the third storey of No.27 and rests on the sill-band, which is boldly lettered: ‘The Westminster Fire Office'. The boardroom was constructed in 1856-57 to designs by Charles Mayhew, architect.
Nos.29 & 30 King Street also present a uniform façade but are not of one build. In June 1860 the old No.29 was acquired by the Bedford Estate and rebuilt. In November 1861 the Estate granted a 75-year-lease of the new property to Leppard & Smith, wholesale law stationers. Charles Dickens, writing in Bleak House has left us a detailed description of just such a law stationer's shop around this date. It: ‘dealt in all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls of parchment; in paper - foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, whitey-brown, and blotting. In stamps; in office quills, pens, ink, India-rubber pounce (a fine powder used to prepare the surface of parchment before writing) pins, pencils, sealing-wax and wafers; in red tape and green ferret (stout tape); in pocket-books, almanacs, diaries and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands - glass and leaden; in pen-knives, scissors, bodkins and other small office cutlery; in short in articles too numerous to mention ...'
No.29 King Street retains an excellent shop front, but a similar one at No.30 has been almost completely removed. No.30 was put up on the site of the original house in 1859-60 for the sitting tenants, Hamburger, Rogers & Co., gold-lace-makers and gold-wire-drawers, under an 80-year Bedford Estate building lease from Lady Day 1858. The builder was probably William Howard and the architect was Charles Gray Searle, who was also the architect of No.24 Floral Street at the rear. Gold-wire-drawing was an ancient and lucrative art which has now all but disappeared from the jewelry trade. The gold was first produced in cylindrical form. It was then drawn through several iron holes, each smaller than its predecessor. Each new hole lessened the wire's diameter, but it gained in length what it lost in thickness. In this manner it was possible to produce gold wire thinner than a hair; and a single ounce of gold could be drawn to a length of several thousand feet.
Nos.31 & 32 King Street are basically of early 18th century date, refaced in 1860. No.31 was built in 1713, the last full year of the reign of Queen Anne, after the original house on the site, which dated from 1706c, and was occupied by a merchant tailor named Gilbert Lacy, was destroyed by fire. Lacy spent £600 of his own money rebuilding the house, as a consequence of which the Bedford Estate granted him a new lease on advantageous terms. However, he did not re-occupy the property. It was taken by an upholsterer, Thomas Arne, the father of the composer, Thomas Augustine Arne [1710-1778] who spent his childhood years here. Arne produced numerous light operas and incidental music, much of it for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where he was leader of the band. He is best remembered today for Rule Britannia [1740].
Arne's sister, Susannah Maria Arne [1714-1766], was born in this house. She first sang in opera at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, and was ‘highly esteemed as a vocalist both in oratorio and in opera'. She was ‘a particular favourite with Handel'. As an actress she failed in comedy and she failed in tragedy until she came under the influence of David Garrick, whose company she joined at Drury Lane in 1753. There she was persuaded to ‘shake off the old-fashioned declamatory style', and became acknowledged as a powerful tragedienne. In 1734 she married Theophilus Cibber, the actor-playwright son of Colley Cibber [1671-1757], but the marriage did not last. Her father-in-law, also an actor, is best remembered today for having designed the bas-relief which decorates the Monument to the Great Fire of London. [He executed it while on daily release from a debtors' prison.]
Another luminary associated with No.31 King Street is the portrait painter and engraver, John Raphael Smith [1752-1812] who lived here from 1787 to 1805. He began life as a Derby linen-draper but soon found favour with his engravings after Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough etc. He ultimately turned from engraving and the painting of miniatures to pastel portraiture.
No.32 King Street was built in 1707 - at about the same time as the short-lived house at No.31 - under a building lease from the 2nd Duke of Bedford to Margaret Griffiths, widow. This lady undertook to spend £300 on constructing a ‘second-rate1 house. It was substantially repaired in 1748. It largely accommodated small tradesmen until in 1848 an ‘artificer in brass' called Benjamin Verity, then the lessee of No.31, took a repairing lease of both houses, which were occupied then and thereafter in common by the firm of Verity, subsequently electrical engineers. A coarsely detailed and over-elaborate stucco front of Italianate character conceals the early date of these houses. The interior of No.32 boasts an early 18th century staircase, dog-legged; while No.31 has in its second and third storeys small closets with simple paneling and angle fireplaces typical of the early 18th century.
The history of the site of Garrick House from about 1900 is entirely commercial. Until the old Covent Garden Market moved to Nine Elms in 1974 the premises here were often let to fruit, vegetable and flower salesmen. The most durable of the occupants was the Westminster Fire Office, mentioned above, which was taken over in 1906 by the Alliance Assurance Company and the Westminster and General Life Association, who united Nos.27 & 28 internally in 1938. In 1951 the boardroom was re-decorated and chandeliers from Bath House2 installed under the direction of Professor [Sir] Albert Richardson. The Westminster Fire Office subsequently became a subsidiary of the Alliance Assurance Group. In 1986 the occupants of Garrick House included a firm of furniture manufacturers, a stamp dealer, an advertising agency and Club World, an international angling club.
The following year Beale and Company Solicitors moved into Garrick House from former premises in Great Smith Street, Westminster, which it had occupied since 1934. This firm had been established at Birmingham as Colmore & Beale in 1838, the second year of the reign of Queen Victoria and the year Charles Dickens published Oliver Twist. In 1858 the firm became Beale and Marigold, and in 1865, when a second office was opened in Westminster, Beale, Marigold and Beale. It later became Beale & Co. and adopted its present name of Beale and Company, Solicitors, LLP on 1 January 2005. It ceased to be associated with the Birmingham office in the late 1970s. Beales is thus the latest in a long line of owners and occupiers of this distinguished old site spanning almost two hundred and fifty years ... from that day in the 1760s when the original tradesmen-lessees of the Bedford Estate walked into King Street to turn the keys in their shop doors for the first time.
1. As defined in the Act of 1667, after the Great Fire of London.
2. Bath House, 82 Piccadilly, on the west corner with Bolton Street. It was built by William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, the bitterest opponent of George I's first minister, Robert Walpole. The chandeliers seem to have found their way to Garrick House at a time when Bath House was near derelict. It was demolished in 1960.