Newport House

[Newport House.] Newport Street, Great, west of Long Acre, derives its name from "Newport House," the London residence of Montjoy Blount, created Earl of Newport by King Charles I. (d 1665). Lord Newport was living in 1635 in Military Street [see Military Garden] next door to the Earl of Leicester.¹ In February 1644 Garrard writes to the Lord Deputy Wentworth that Lord Newport had "removed to the house that was Sir William Howard's in the Fields, which he gave his brother my Lord Howard, and he hath sold it to my Lord Newport for £2500."² A few years later George Fox, the Quaker, was here.

I had not been long come to London [in 1658], before I heard that a Jesuit, who came over with an Embassador from Spain, had challenged all the Quakers, to dispute with them at the Earl of Newport's House: whereupon some Friends let him know, That we would meet him. Then he sent us word. He would meet with twelve of the wisest learned men we had. After awhile he sent us word. He would meet with but six; and after that he sent us word again. He would have but three to come. We hastened what we could, lest, for all his great boast, he should put it quite off at last. When we were come to the house, I bid Nicolas Bond and Edward Burrough go up, and enter the discourse with him, and I would walk awhile in the Yard, and then come up after them.—George Fox's Journal, 1658, p. 286, sub, ann.

William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire, died in Newport House, described at the time as "neere Leicester Fields in the suburbs of London." In the Accounts of the Overseers of St Martin's-in-the-Fields for the year 1647 the Earl of Newport is rated in the sum of £2 : 10s. ''for the Lamas of the ground whereon his house and garden stands;" and a few years earlier (1641–1642), in the Lamas Grounds Receipts, the same charge is entered "for rent of the Lamas Comon, builded upon heretofore by Sir William Howard, Knight," which house Lord Newport had just purchased. By 1672 the property had passed into other hands. The Earl of Newport's house stood at the north-west corner of Newport Street, Lord Bolingbroke's at the north-east.

[Newport House.] [Newport Market Area,] now bounded approximately by Shaftesbury Avenue, West Street, the eastern extremity of Sandringham Buildings, Little Newport Street and Newport Place ... derives its name from Mountjoy Blount, Earl of Newport, the occupant for thirty years of a large house known as Newport House, whose grounds covered the whole area. His heir sold the estate, which was then laid out into streets and a market. This layout remained until the formation of Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue in the 1880's, which involved the demolition and reconstruction of almost the entire estate.