Cork Street

Cork street, Burlington Gardens.

Cork-Street, New Bond-Street,—the first E. parallel to part of it, extending from Vigo-lane to 13, Clifford-st.

Cork-St., Burlington-gardens, is opposite the northern end of Burlington Arcade and reaches from Burlington-gardens, to Clifford-street, between Old Bond-street and Old Burlington-street.

Cork Street, Burlington Gardens, so named after the architect, Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington and Cork. The rate-books show that Dr. Arbuthnot was living here in 1729: he died here February 27, 1735; and here in the previous December died Mrs. Abigail Masham, whose lot it was to have been married also (as Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, informs us) in "Dr. Arbuthnot's lodgings," which must then have been in St. James's Palace. Here lived Erasmus Lewis, the agent of the Harleys, and the intimate friend of Pope, Arbuthnot, and Swift. When the imaginary Richard Sympson informed Benjamin Motte, the bookseller, that "my cousin, Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, entrusted me some years ago with a copy of his Travels, he requested him to go to "the house of Erasmus Lewis in Cork Street, behind Burlington House, and let him know that you are come from me."¹ Field Marshal Wade (d. 1748) lived here in a house designed for him by the Earl of Burlington in 1723; there is a view of it in the Vitruvius Britannicus.

I went yesterday to see Marshall Wade's house, which is selling by auction, and is worse contrived on the inside than is conceivable, all to humour the beauty of the front. Lord Chesterfield said, that to be sure he could not live in it, but intended to take the house over against it to look at it. It is literally true that all the direction he gave my Lord Burlington was to have a place for a large cartoon [Meleager and Atalanta] of Rubens that he had bought in Flanders; but my lord found it necessary to have so many correspondent doors that there was no room at last for the picture: and the Marshall was forced to sell the picture to my father; it is now at Houghton.—Walpole to Montagu, May 18, 1748.

The facade of Wade's house is now in some measure concealed from view by the New Burlington Hotel, and of which it forms a part.—Milizia, Lives of Architects, ed. 1826, p. 295.

October 2, 1793.—The Cork Street Hotel has answered its recommendation; it is clean, convenient, and quiet. My first evening was passed at home in a very agreeable tête-à-tête with my friend Elmsley.—Gibbon to Lord Sheffield.

At No. 17 is the Bristol Hotel; Nos. 19 and 20 the Burlington Hotel; No. 21 the Queen's.

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1 Gentleman's Magazine, July 1855, p. 36.