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Devonshire House in Piccadilly, was the London townhouse of the Dukes of Devonshire during the 18th and 19th centuries. Following a fire in 1733 it was rebuilt by William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire, in the Palladian style, to designs by William Kent. Completed circa 1740, it stood empty after the First World War and was demolished in 1924.
Many of Britain's great noblemen maintained large London houses that bore their names. As a ducal house (only in mainland Europe were such houses referred to as palaces), Devonshire House was one of the largest and grandest, ranking alongside Burlington House, Montague House, Lansdowne House, Londonderry House, Northumberland House, and Norfolk House. All of these have long been demolished, except Burlington and Lansdowne, both of which have been substantially altered.
Today the site is occupied by a namesake modern office building.
Berkeley House, a classical mansion built by Hugh May, having been purchased in 1696 by William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, was renamed "Devonshire House". As part of the agreement, John Berkeley, 3rd Baron Berkeley of Stratton (c. 1663–1697) undertook not to build on that part of the land he retained which lay directly behind the house to the north, so preserving the Duke's view. This covenant was still in force when the Berkeley land was developed after 1730, and the Garden square of Berkeley Square represent the northern termination of that undeveloped strip, combined in the south with the gardens of Lansdowne House.'Berkeley Square, North Side,' in Survey of London: Volume 40, the Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, Part 2 (The Buildings), ed. F H W Sheppard (London: London County Council, 1980), 64-67, accessed 21 November 2015, online
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. The cause was attributed to careless labourers. London Online; Berkeley House and Devonshire House retrieved 30 September 2010; Sykes, Christopher Simon. Private Palaces: Life in the Great London Houses, p. 98, Chatto & Windus, 1985 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.
The 3rd Duke chose the fashionable architect William Kent, for whom this was a first commission for a London house. It was built between 1734 and about 1740.Howard Colvin A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, 3rd ed. 1995, s.v. "Kent, William". 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. Chiswick House later came, with other estates, into the possession of the Dukes of Devonshire through the marriage of the 4th Duke to Lady Charlotte Boyle, daughter and heiress of Lord Burlington.Chatsworth, p52. "The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire". Derbyshire Countryside Ltd. 2005
The plan of Devonshire House defines it as one of the earliest of the great 18th-century town houses, then designed identically to grand country houses. Its purpose, too, was identical, to display wealth and consequently power. Thus a great town house, by its large size and design, accentuated its owner's power by its contrast with the monotony of the smaller terraced houses surrounding it.Tait A. A. ‘Adam, Robert (1728–1792)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2009 accessed 4 Oct 2010
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.The great height of the grander saloons pictured in The Illustrated London News was effected in the extensive restructuring under Decimus Burton by taking into the public spaces former upstairs accommodations, making of Devonshire House even more a site purely for public receptions and gallery display. Inconspicuous pairs of staircases are tucked into modest sites at either side, for the upstairs was strictly private.enfilades of interconnecting rooms, of which the largest space is devoted to the library, flank central halls, adjusting the traditions of the symmetrical Baroque , 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 circling a central top-lit stair hall, which allowed guests to "circulate". Greeted at the head of the stairs, they then flowed in a convenient circuit, rather than retracing their steps. This design was first exemplified by the now-demolished Norfolk House completed in 1756.Girouard, pp 194 & 195. Therefore, it seems that Devonshire House was old-fashioned and unsuited to its intended use almost from the moment of its completion. Thus from the late 18th century its interiors were vastly altered.
The new staircase conveyed guests directly to the piano nobile, from a low entrance hall, in a newly created recess formed by creating a convex bow at the centre of the rear garden facade. British History Online retrieved 5 October 2010. Known as the "Crystal Staircase", it had a glass handrail and newel posts.Maev Kennedy, "Chatsworth House Auction". Guardian Online, Wednesday 29 September 2010, retrieved 5 October 2010. Burton amalgamated several of the principal rooms; he created a vast heavily gilded ballroom from two former drawing rooms and often created double height rooms at the expense of the bedrooms above, causing the house to become even more of a place for display and entertaining rather than for living.
Devonshire House was the setting for the brilliant social and political life of the circle around William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire and his duchess, Lady Georgiana Spencer, Whig supporters of Charles James Fox.Hugh Stokes, The Devonshire House Circle, 1916. The grand house was also the site for the much celebrated Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee with a lavish Fancy Dress Masquerade ball, known as the Devonshire House Ball of 1897. The guests, including Albert Edward, Prince of Wales and the Princess of Wales, were dressed as historical portraits come to life. The many portrait photographs taken at the ball have illustrated countless books on the social history of the late Victorian era.A light modern memoir of the ball, written by the daughter of the 11th duke and duchess, is Sophia Murphy, The Duchess of Devonshire's Ball, 1984. See also some images of guests in costume here: http://www.rvondeh.dircon.co.uk/incalmprose/index.html
After the war, many aristocratic families gave up their London houses and Devonshire House was deserted in 1919.Noted by Fiske Kimball, in describing interiors from Lansdowne House re-erected in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, "Lansdowne House Redivivus". The Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, 1943. The demolition was mentioned nostalgically several times in literature and caused Virginia Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway to think, as she passed down Piccadilly, of "Devonshire House without its gilt leopards", a reference to the house's gilded gates.Virginia Woolf, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street", 1923. It also inspired Siegfried Sassoon's "Monody on the Demolition of Devonshire House".Richard Davenport-Hines, "Cavendish, Victor Christian William, ninth Duke of Devonshire (1868–1938)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009 accessed 4 Oct 2010.
The reason for the abandonment was that the 9th Duke was the first of his family to suffer death duty, which amounted to over £500,000 (£18 million). Additionally, he inherited the debts of the 7th Duke. This double burden prompted the sale of many of the family's valuables, including books printed by William Caxton, many 1st editions of Shakespeare,Now in the Huntington Library, California and Devonshire House itself with its even more valuable three acres of gardens.
The sale was finalised in 1920 at a price of £750,000 (equivalent to £27,038,808 in 2023) and the house was demolished. Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, p. 54. The two purchasers were Shurmer Sibthorpe and Lawrence Harrison, wealthy industrialists, who built on the site a hotel and block of flats. When told that the proposed demolition was an act of vandalism, Sibthorpe, echoing the building's 18th-century critics, replied: "Archaeologists have gathered round me and say I am a vandal, but personally I think the place is an eyesore."Laura Battle, "An aristocrat's London residence gives way to modern life, 1925". FT Magazine, 21 August 2010.
Following the sale of Devonshire House, the Ninth Duke of Devonshire's London home was No. 2 Carlton Gardens. This remainded the London base for the family until it was damaged during the Second World War; in 1950 a new London residence was purchased at No. 19 Hill Street, Mayfair. This house was subsequently sold by Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire in 1952 due to the substantial death duties levied on the estate after the death of his father Edward Cavendish, 10th Duke of Devonshire in 1950. The 11th Duke purchased a smaller house at No. 4 Chesterfield Street, Mayfair from the-then Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in January 1952.
Some of the paintings and furniture from Devonshire House survive at the Duke's principal seat, Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. The wrought-iron entrance gates, between piers with rusticated quoins and topped with seated , have been re-erected on the south side of Piccadilly, to form an entrance to Green Park. The wine cellar is now the ticket office of Green Park Underground station. Other architectural salvage included furniture, doorways and mantelpieces which were relocated to Chatsworth. Some of these stored items were auctioned by Sotheby's on 5–7 October 2010, Sotheby's catalog including five William Kent chimneypieces from Devonshire House described by the auctioneer Lord Dalmeny as being of special interest and value: "You can't buy them because they are all in listed buildings now. It's like being able to commission Rubens to paint your ceiling." The Times, 29 Sep 2010; Ben Hoyle, p. 55.
Most of the great detached houses of noblemen which existed in the West End of London, where even the grandest persons often lived in , including Devonshire House, Norfolk House and Chesterfield House, are today numbered amongst England's thousands of lost houses; Lansdowne House lost its front to a street-widening scheme. Just a few survive, but in corporate or state ownership. Marlborough House passed to the crown in the 19th century. 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. Spencer House is an event venue. Manchester House houses the Wallace Collection, a museum open to the public. Bridgewater House, Westminster by Charles Barry is now used as offices. Currently, Dudley House is the only one of London's surviving private palaces to be occupied and used as its design intended.A complete list (see Townhouse (Great Britain)) would also include Melbourne House, remodelled as The Albany; Dover House in Whitehall, now government offices; Derby House in Stratford Place off Oxford Street; Crewe House,in Curzon Street; Bourdon House at the northeast end of Berkeley Square; Egremont House, Piccadilly, housing the Naval and Military Club; and Bath House. These are mentioned by Nikolaus Pevsner, London I: The Cities of London and Westminster (Buildings of England series) 1962. 78f.
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