Stratford Place

Stratford-Place, Oxford-Street,—at 159, op. South-Molton-st. near ½ a mile on the L. from Tyburn-turnpike.

Stratford-Pl., is opposite South Molton-street.

Stratford Place, Oxford Street, north side, opposite South Molton Street, was built about 1775 by Edward Stratford second Earl of Aldborough, and others, to whom a ground-lease, renewable forever under certain conditions, had been granted by the Corporation of London. In the mansion that terminates the place, and fronts the entrance from Oxford Street, the Earl of Aldborough resided for many years.¹ Here stood the Lord Mayor's Banqueting House, erected for the Mayor and Corporation to dine in after their periodical visits to the Bayswater and Paddington Conduits, and the Conduit Head adjacent to the Banqueting House, which supplied the City with water.

          A conduit head
Hard by the place toward Tyburn, which they call
My Lord Mayor's Banqueting House.
Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass, Act v. Sc. I.

Strype preserves a curious picture of a visit made by the Mayor to the Conduit Heads in the year 1562. Before dinner they hunted the hare and killed her, and after dinner they went to hunting the fox; "there was a cry for a mile, and at length the hounds killed him at the end of St. Giles'; great hallooing at his death and blowing of horns." The Banqueting House was taken down in 1737, and the cisterns arched over at the same time.² Here General Strode (the same who set up the statue in Cavendish Square) erected a pillar to commemorate the naval victories of Britain, which it did for a very brief period, as the foundations gave way in 1805.

About 1792 Richard Cosway, R.A., removed from Schomberg House, Pall Mall, to the south-western corner of Stratford Place. The house has a lion on the outside, and hardly had he taken possession of his new abode when a pasquinade, attributed to Peter Pindar, was affixed to his door:—

When a man to a fair for a show brings a lion,
'Tis usual a monkey the sign post to tie on:
But here the old custom reverséd is seen
For the lion's without, and the monkey's within!

Cosway, one of the vainest of men, was so mortified that he removed shortly after to No. 20. This he fitted up and furnished in a style then scarcely known in the houses of professional men. His marble chimneypieces were all carved by Thomas Banks, R.A. The rooms—each fitted in a different manner—"were more like scenes of enchantment pencilled by a poet's fancy, than anything, perhaps, before displayed in a domestic habitation."

His furniture consisted of ancient chairs, couches, and conversation stools, elaborately carved and gilt and covered with the most costly Genoa velvets; escritoires of ebony, inlaid with mother-of-pearl; and rich caskets for antique gems, exquisitely enamelled, and adorned with onyxes, opals, rubies and emeralds. There were cabinets of ivory, curiously wrought; mosaic tables set with jasper, blood-stone, and lapis-lazuli; having their feet carved into the claws of lions and eagles; screens of old raised oriental Japan; massive musical clocks richly chased with or-molu and tortoise-shell; ottomans superbly damasked; Persian and other carpets... and rich hangings of English tapestry. The chimney-pieces, carved by Banks, were further adorned with the choicest bronzes and models in wax and terra-cotta; the tables covered with old Sèvres, blue, Mandarin, Nankin, and Dresden china; and the cabinets were surmounted with crystal cups adorned with the York and Lancaster roses, which might probably have graced the splendid banquets of the proud Wolsey.—Smith's Nollekens, vol. ii. p. 401.

In his drawing-room was a marble sarcophagus in which was the embalmed body of his deceased daughter; but this Mrs. Cosway, on her return from her long sojourn in Italy, got rid of, sending the body to the Bunhill Fields cemetery, and the sarcophagus to Nollekens, the sculptor. Cosway resided here to the last. His death occurred in Miss Udney's carriage, on July 4, 1821, while taking an airing on the Edgeware Road. Madame D'Arblay records³ meeting Sir Joshua Reynolds at a dinner at Mrs. Walsingham's (a daughter of Sir Hanbury Williams) in Stratford Place. Henry Addington (Lord Sidmouth) was living here in 1792. Sydney Smith at No. 18 in 1835. No. 1 is the Portland Club House. R. W. Elliston, the celebrated actor, dated from Stratford Place in June 1822.

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¹ Londiniana, vol. iii. p. 40.
² Maitland, ed. 1739, p. 799.
³ Diary, vol. ii. p. 164.