MAYFAIR boasts the best collection of grand townhouses in London, all too easily forgotten as so many have been converted into offices. Now a transformation is taking place. Houses turned over to commercial use 60 years ago, when wartime bombing created a shortage, are now being returned to opulent single houses.
Peter Wetherell, who is selling 72 Brook Street for £9.5 million, says: “For years it was said there was no demand, but that was because there was no supply.” With Westminster Council pressing for an end to the wartime licences, he produced for the Grosvenor Estate a handsome booklet, Quintessential Mayfair: A Portfolio of Ten Elegant Georgian Properties. The idea was that the houses might sell to a single developer, but at the last moment the Duke of Westminster decided to retain 68 Brook Street (next to the Grosvenor Estate offices) and as a result other houses were snapped up for individual restoration.
No 72 was acquired by Tiggy Butler, who has transformed the Lyons demesne in Ireland and a broodingly beautiful house in Kentucky. She has brought in her own team of restorers, led by Aldi, a firm of Polish builders. The lift has gone. There is no swimming pool in the basement. Instead the effort has gone into creating interiors as comfortably and richly furnished as a freshly decorated suite at nearby Claridge’s.
Now being marketed under the grander name of Holland House, No 72 is one of the earliest houses in Mayfair. Its interest is the greater as it was built as a show house by Edward Shepherd, after whom Shepherd Market is named. He deserves to be a legend among London’s architects and developers as, unlike so many, he appears never to have overstretched himself or been caught by a slump in the market. In 1730 The Daily Post described him as “that ingenious architect Edward Shepherd who built the Duke of Kent’s fine house in St James’s Square, the Earl of Thanet’s and Albemarle’s in Grosvenor Square, and many other magnificent Buildings for his Grace the Duke of Chandos and Other Persons of Quality and Distinction”.
Shepherd is named in the rate books as the occupant of No 72 between 1726 and 1729. No 72 is one of a series of houses that Shepherd built as pairs — others are 11 and 12 South Audley Street and 74 and 75 in the same street. His trick was to introduce a kink in the party wall, so the staircases in both houses could be set to the side of the main rooms and not eat up space.
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The house is narrow at the front and wide at the back, with a grand room on each main floor occupying the width of the garden. And what a garden. In most of Mayfair, rear extensions and enlarged basements have consumed gardens, leaving little more than patios. Here the gardens of a dozen houses seem like a private London square shaded by noble, mature plane trees.
The front door opens into a striking hall with cross vaults and a bold arch inset with fine Classical coffering. To the left is the dining room, the best 1720s interior in the house, with fine deal panelling, arch-headed alcoves and a plaster ceiling full of Baroque swagger with fruit, flowers and Juno masks.
The ground-floor drawing room has the proportions of one in a grand 18th-century country house with the windows on the long wall. Richly swagged curtains hide the fluted columns of the Venetian window. The ceiling is Adamesque, and Vincent Carmody has added ornamental plaster flourishes on the walls.
The butter-yellow paintwork with white trim is the work of Alastair Erskine. The whole room is an overwhelming symphony in shades of the same colour, in silks, satins and velvet. The vibrant yellow continues in the bedroom above with a four-poster with ribbon-twined colonnettes, and more English silk curtains. Floors of pale Polish oak complete the all-blond effect.
Above the first-floor bedroom suite are three further floors — two of bedrooms and a studio or gym with shower at the top. The basement offers a complete alternative lifestyle, with large family room opening on to a paved terrace through three pairs of french windows.
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The name Holland House is taken from Sir Henry Holland, who lived here between 1822 and 1824 and again from 1827 to 1873. He was followed by Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston Churchill, in 1915-17, and then Adela, Countess of Essex, and her daughter.
The one puzzle is the street front. The redbrick arches and quoins look Edwardian by comparison with the darkened London stock brick of other 18th-century houses in Mayfair. Yet this is red brick of the Age of Wren. If Edward Shepherd were to return, he would be impressed.
Holland House is for sale via FPDSavills 020- 7730 0822, and Wetherell 020-7493 6935