A Brief History of Carlton House Terrace
The British Academy has been based at Carlton House Terrace since 1998. The building overlooks St James’s Park and Whitehall. Although the Academy’s address is No 10, it also occupies most of No 11.
Carlton House Terrace, thought by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, FBA, to rank among ‘the greatest terrace houses ever built in Britain’, is situated at the southern extremity of the Regency Metropolitan Improvements, a scheme to re-develop Crown land between Regent’s Park and St James’s Park, including a new north-south thoroughfare. The designs were commissioned with the support of the Prince Regent in 1810-11 from John Nash, a fashionable architect of the time. Carlton House Terrace was constructed during the late 1820s and early 1830s on land previously occupied by Carlton House, the residence of the Prince Regent, which was demolished having fallen into disrepair after the Regent became King in 1820 and moved along the Mall to Buckingham Palace.
Carlton House Terrace extends from Admiralty Arch to St James’s Palace. It is divided into the East and West Terraces, with the Duke of York’s Column and Steps separating the two. It was conceived by Nash to provide extensive views of St James's Park for its residents and to be an impressive backdrop to the park and the Mall. The Terraces are in Roman Classical style, with Corinthian columns supported on a terrace with a series of Doric columns on the lower frontage facing St James’s Park. The building of the lower Terraces was supervised and completed in 1828 by Sir James Pennethorne, and the upper stories were largely complete by 1833, although the exterior stucco on the East Terrace was not finished until 1869. The Terraces do not have conventional mews or servants’ quarters – these were located beneath the Terrace in the two basements at street level facing the Mall, rather than to the rear.
Carlton House Terrace rapidly became one of the most fashionable addresses in London. The nine separate dwellings that comprised each Terrace remained largely in private occupation until the 1930s, although several were used as official residences for ambassadors, most famously the Prussian Legates and their successors, the German Ambassadors, who occupied No. 9 from 1849 until the beginning of the Second World War.
No. 10 was occupied by the Ridley family of Northumberland, landowners and coal magnates, from the time it was completed until 1924. No. 11, however, has had a more varied history: the original occupant was Lord Monson, followed by William Crockford, proprietor of the gambling club. Then came the Earl of Arundel and Surrey who stayed until 1856, when William Gladstone took up occupation until 1875. Gladstone’s diaries reveal that the Cabinet met there occasionally during his first term as Prime Minister (1868-1874). No. 10 and the greater part of No. 11 were combined in 1924, when the Union Club took the lease of both houses, but the entrance, hallway, main staircase, first floor rooms and part of the basement of No. 11 were let back to the Guinness family who occupied it at the time. This arrangement has remained essentially the same since then.
The social upheavals of the First World War and the rapidly rising costs of upkeep meant that maintaining a large London house was becoming increasingly impractical, and many were not well looked after. In the 1930s, serious consideration was given to demolishing the Terrace, together with many of London’s grander residences. The Crown Lands Advisory Committee, in no small part influenced by the Georgian Group (founded in 1937 in direct response to the threat to Carlton House Terrace), came to the view, however, that the Nash Terraces should be preserved. The Committee recommended that official residences, clubs of good standing, and headquarters of learned societies and institutions should occupy the Terrace to keep them in use. In accordance with this policy, the Union Club remained in No. 10 until 1951. Thereafter, the building fell into decline, being used as government offices until the 1990s.
The Terrace now houses many learned societies and academic organisations, such as the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining at No. 1, the Royal College of Pathologists at No. 2, the Royal Academy of Engineering at Nos. 3 and 4, and the Royal Society at No. 6 to 9. The Academy of Medical Sciences and the Foundation for Science and Technology occupy rooms at No. 10. The Arts and Humanities Research Board occupied rooms in No. 10 too, until its move (as Council) to Bristol, but it retains a London office at No. 10. Several of the overseas Schools and Institutes sponsored by the Academy have a London office in No.10. No. 11 is occupied by the Foreign Press Association. The offices of the Institute of Contemporary Arts are at No. 12, and the Crown Estate itself occupied Nos 13-16 until recently. The Royal Society of Portrait Painters is at No. 17.
Although Carlton House Terrace was badly damaged during the Second World War, much of the interior of No. 10 has survived from the early years of the twentieth century, when the 2nd Viscount Ridley commissioned a significant remodelling in the French style from Detmar Blow & Ferdnand Billerey, known for their expertise in the French classical tradition. The remodelling included a new porch, the installation of a three-flight black marble staircase designed by Billerey in the entrance hall, with a bronze balustrade by Bainbridge Reynolds, and the grand corniced ceilings in the public rooms. The largest of these (currently the Lecture Hall) has an unfinished painted ceiling by Brémond & Tastemain. The Ridley crest set into the floor of the entrance hall probably pre-dates the remodelling, as does the tondo of the Fall of Phaeton in the porch, which was installed c. 1850. The artist, J G Lough, was born in Hexham, and was a protégé of the Ridley family.
In preparation for the Academy, the ground floor rooms were returned to a nineteenth-century style by Feilden and Mawson, a firm of architects and restoration consultants which has worked on a number of major public buildings in central London, including several in Whitehall and Somerset House. They are currently acting as consultants on the conversion of the Middlesex Guildhall into the home of the Supreme Court.