Museums & Attractions

‘Talk about location,’ says Jane Rick, director of Spencer House, gazing out of the central window of the first-floor Great Room at the stately garden below and the open spaces of Green Park beyond. ‘Buckingham Palace is just down there, St James’s Palace is there, Parliament over there… This house was right at the centre of eighteenth-century aristocratic and political life.’

Built between 1756 and 1766 for the first Earl Spencer, this private palace was an unequivocal statement about money and power. The Earl, just 21 when he commissioned it, had come into his fortune and title via a complex realignment of the potent Sunderland and Marlborough families, and was anxious not only to flash some cash in the most fashionable part of town, but to show off his Grand Tour acquisitions and prove himself a connoisseur of the neo-classical style that was taking London by storm. So keen was he to stay up to date, indeed, that he sacked his first architect, the Roman specialist John Vardy, halfway through the project, engaging the very latest red-hot name, James ‘Athenian’ Stuart, to finish the upper rooms in the Greek style that was suddenly making all that Roman stuff seem a bit, well, old.
Feature continues

Above all, this is a house intended to be read. From the gilded apse in the Ante Room, which those in the know would immediately recognise as inspired by the Temple of Venus in Rome, to the griffin friezes in the magnificent Palm Room, which nod wittily both to the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina and to the griffins supporting the Spencer coat of arms, the house is layered with messages about its owner’s exquisite taste and purchasing power.

The Palm Room at Spencer House (Mark Fiennes ©Spencer House)

But there’s a more touching text woven into the fabric of the building too: repeated references to love, marriage and happiness testify to the young earl’s devotion to his beautiful 18-year-old wife, Georgiana. This is particularly clear in the design’s triumphant final act the Painted Room, which leads off the Great Room and served as a retiring room for weary dancers when the Spencers threw one of their legendary parties. Known as the most perfect neo-classical interior in Europe, its walls are richly painted with scenes depicting the Triumph of Love, as well as music, drinking, dancing and merriment.

Despite some wartime bomb damage to the ceiling, the Painted Room is one of the few in the house to retain many of its original features. The Spencer family moved out in 1926, taking their art collection and, during WWII, numerous fireplaces, doors and doorcases, dado rails, skirtings and other pieces that could be installed in their country house, Althorp. Until 1985, Spencer House was let out as offices – gilt mouldings were whitewashed, ceilings covered over, partitions put up and lifts and other services shoehorned unceremoniously in. ‘We have photographs of holiday postcards Blu-tacked up in the niches,’ shudders Rick.

The house was saved when Lord Rothschild took an interest in the mid-’80s. His company RIT Capital Partners plc took a 125-year lease on the property, with a promise to restore it to its former glory as part of the deal. ‘It’s like the phoenix rising from the ashes,’ says Rick. ‘Over a hundred craftsmen were pulled together by Lord Rothschild for the project, and this has become the benchmark for all restorations. Only the finest materials and the finest craftsmen were used. We bought a huge block of Carrara marble to make new chimneypieces to match the originals, and the craftsman who made them was told he had to do it perfectly; Lord Rothschild didn’t want any corners cut. He said it was a wonderful commission to get because most clients want to shave a bit of money off here and there.’

The resurrection lasted ten years and since then the house has been open to the public on Sundays and, by appointment, Mondays. The garden, however, is only open twice this year: on May 11, and on June 22. It, too, has been transformed. ‘I came here 13 years ago and it was a little bit like a garden of remembrance: large bushes and not much else,’ recalls Rick. ‘So we took a plant list from Henry Holland’s time, when he was working for the second Earl Spencer, and we put back as many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century plants as we could. We also know that the earls would have wanted to show off, so when we could find exotic plants that would have been sent on the trading routes by sea we have put them in. They were the show-off pieces, to show he could afford it, and by gosh he certainly could.’

It took deep pockets to create the house and deep pockets to preserve it – though it sings for its supper nowadays via a banqueting business and other activities. Not a bad fate as these things go: Devonshire House, which was just across the street, is now a car showroom, a Starbucks and a Marks & Spencer.

Spencer House, 27 St James’s Place SW1 (020 7499 8620/www.spencerhouse.co.uk). House open Sundays 10.30am-5.30pm. Adm £9, concs £7. Garden open May 11 & June 22 from 2pm. Adm £3.50 (combined ticket £11).