Londonderry House
Londonderry House was an aristocratic townhouse situated on Park Lane in the Mayfair district of London, England. The mansion served as the London residence of the Marquesses of Londonderry. It remained their London home until 1962. In that year, Londonderry House was sold by the Trustees of 7th Marquess of Londonderry|the 7th Marquess of Londonderry]'s Will Trust to a developer who built the "Londonderry Hotel" on the site, not the Hilton. The Hilton Hotel is on the other side of the street, and had already been opened. COMO Metropolitan London now occupies the site of Londonderry House.
History
Holderness House, later Londonderry House, was designed by Athenian Stuart for the 4th Earl of Holderness in the period c. 1760–5, with ceilings based on Robert Wood's Ruins of Palmyra. The Earl is thought to have acquired the building next door as well, but at a later date. He subsequently joined the two so that the house became a double-fronted London mansion.The residence was purchased in 1819 by the 1st Baron Stewart, an Irish aristocrat, to serve as a home whilst the family stayed in London during the annual social season. Soon after the purchase, Lord Stewart began redecorating and spared no expense, as shown by his choice of architects: Benjamin Dean Wyatt and Philip Wyatt. In 1822, Lord Stewart became the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry. By 1835, the home's transformation was complete. Some half a century later, in 1882–83, the 5th Marquess of Londonderry commissioned James Brooks to build, in red brick with terracotta facings, a handsome new stable yard, coach houses, and accommodation for the stable staff of Londonderry House, arranged around an internal courtyard.
Prince Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte often visited Londonderry House while exiled in London in 1836-40 and 1846–48.
During the First World War, the house was used as a military hospital. After the war, the 7th Marquess of Londonderry, a prominent Ulster Unionist politician, and his wife, Edith Helen Chaplin, continued to use the house and entertained extensively. After the Second World War, the house remained in the possession of the 7th Marquess of Londonderry; in 1946 a lease over most of the building was granted to the Royal Aero Club for a nominal rent, whilst Lord Londonderry's family retained twenty two rooms for their own use. Following the death of the 7th Marquess in 1949, ownership of the house was held in a discretionary trust, and his widow Edith was granted the use of a flat within the house by permission of the Trustees of her late husband's Will, which she retained until her own death in 1959.
Sale and demolition
The Londonderry age on Park Lane drew to a close after the death of Edith, Dowager Marchioness of Londonderry. The last social events hosted by the family in Londonderry House were the debutante balls of the Hon. Elizabeth Keppel in 1959 and the Hon. Rose Keppel in 1961, hosted by their mother, Lady Mairi Bury ; the wedding reception of the Hon. Elizabeth Keppel, following her marriage to her cousin Alastair Villiers, in June 1962, and a subsequent, final, "farewell" party given by Alastair, 9th Marquess, the following month, for 300 guests, including Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney.The house was sold at auction by the Trustees of the Estate of the 7th Marquess on 26 July 1962. The purchaser was former Tesco Director Isaac Klug, who purchased the site of Londonderry House and an adjoining lot at 22-23 Hertford Street for £500,000 on behalf of his family's investment trust Budget Property Co.
The "Londonderry Silver" was mostly bought by the Brighton council for the Royal Pavilion, where it can currently be seen, along with the Ormonde silver. The large statue at the foot of the staircase of Londonderry House, Canova's Theseus and the Minotaur, was bought by the Victoria & Albert Museum. George Stubbs's masterpiece, the life-size painting of the racehorse Hambletonian after his famous win at Newmarket, was one of the items which belonged to Lady Mairi Bury and it was taken down from the library in Londonderry House and rehung on the staircase of Lady Mairi's own home at Mount Stewart, in County Down, where it is still to be seen today.
Description
The tragedy of the sale of Londonderry House was not the comparatively meagre price it fetched for the Londonderry family, but the fact that this magnificent mansion was then immediately, apart from its stableyard, completely demolished. The bland exterior of Londonderry House concealed, for example, the aforementioned magnificently painted, and fresco-ceiling interiors by James "Athenian" Stewart who had, coincidentally, built the Temple of the Winds at the Londonderry's Ulster seat of Mount Stewart. The main stairway was meant to outdo that of Lancaster House in nearby St James's. It succeeded in this: it had a large skylight, Rococo chandelier and two individual flights of stairs flanking each other. This stairway led into the Grand Ballroom which, rather individually, held full-length portraits of the Stewart family men in Garter Robes, by artists such as Sir Thomas Lawrence and Glyn Philpot. Said to have been inspired by the Waterloo Chamber of Apsley House, it also outdid that. Around the room were large marble statues including by Canova and chairs in the French style.On from that was the Dining Room, which held the Londonderry collection of silver. Another elegant room was the tripartite Drawing Room, which held more Londonderry Silver, French furniture, Old Master paintings, and ceilings painted with birds.