The earliest known building lease in Gerrard Street was granted by Barbon in 1678 for a term of fifty-one years. It was granted to William Gillingham of St. Margaret's, Westminster, bricklayer, for the sites of the modern Nos. 15 and 16. Another was granted in 1679 for fifty-eight years to John Shales for one of the two houses which he built on the site of the present Nos. 36–39. As a partial payment for work which he had done on the 'greate' house, Barbon let the fifth house from the east end (on the site of No. 44?) to William Stephens for fifty-one years from Michaelmas 1680. The house on the south corner, where No. 30 Wardour Street now stands, was let in 1681to John Stephens, gentleman, for fifty-one years. In 1682 Gerard House (on the south side) was let to Lord 'Macclesfield by Barbon and four houses on the north side were granted from Michaelmas of that year. Another lease, for a corner house, was granted in partial payment to Thomas Young, carver, and Thomas Streeter, painter, in January 1683/4; this house was still, in December 1684, 'nothing but bare Walles and not fully Tyled in'.
The house on the site of No. 21 was probably finished about 1685 and was let to Samuel Hunt of St. Anne's, carpenter. Finally, George Capell was said to have built the former Nos. 5 and 6 Gerrard Street and Joseph Ward, carpenter, built a house on the site of No. 43.
From this evidence the building of Gerrard Street appears to have been spread over the period 1677 to 1685; the surviving ratebooks suggest that most of the houses were finished at the end of this period, but that the street was not fully occupied until after 1685. There are seventeen names under Gerrard Street in 1684, thirty-nine in 1685 and forty-eight in 1691.
The appearance of the original street can be deduced from the evidence of drawings and photographs of houses which have been demolished (e.g., Nos. 28, 29, 43 and Gerard House, and from the surviving houses which, although much altered, seem to date from the 1680's (Nos. 10–12, 31, 41 and 47). At all these last six it is necessary to step down when entering the passage, an indication of how much the street level has risen since they were built.
The original buildings were, almost certainly without exception, three-storeyed houses with garrets. The finishing of the interiors with wainscot panelling, as recently existing at No. 41, was common, probably, to all. The 'greate' house was so finished, and so, too, was the original house at No. 21. An inventory of the latter, dated 1686, shows that all three floors were wainscoted and painted, and that the two garrets were partially wainscoted. All the fireplaces had painted chimneypieces, firestone and marble hearths, and were set with 'galley' tiles. At the rear of the house was the kitchen and a 'Lardery', the former fitted with a buttery and supplied by a pump with New River water.
The regularity of the street, achieved by matching storey heights, was broken by the width of the house plots, which varied from about eighteen feet (e.g., Nos. 12, 13, 14 and 16) to over sixty feet (one of the houses on the site ofNos. 36– 39). The largest houses, and therefore the best patronized, were on the south side, opposite Macclesfield Street; all the plots on this side were a little over sixty feet in depth and most of the gardens were contiguous to the garden of Leicester House. Only on the north side, where there was access to the mews, did some houses haveattached stables at the rear, although consequently the yards and gardens were shorter. There were, however, two very large houses on the north side at the east end, Lady Wiseman's (No. 9) and the Earl of Devonshire's further east.
A number of the early inhabitants of the large houses in Gerrard Street were prominent in political affairs, and several were chosen to supervise the building of the parish church. From the first, however, the population was mixed, the meaner houses on the north side of the street and at the corners attracting tavern-keepers and tradespeople, several of the latter becoming suppliers to the royal household at Leicester House.
Gerrard Street's chief distinction was Dryden's occupation of a house on the south side, which, by mistaken identity, preserved the house next to the one in which he actually lived. Other men of letters associated with the street include Dr. Johnson and the other members of The Club, and in more recent times, G. K. Chesterton and HilaireBelloc, who dined in a small restaurant in Gerrard Street at their first meeting.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many artists lived in Gerrard Street, and there was also from an early period a number of metal workers and jewellers (the most notable being Paul de Lamerie), who in the nineteenth century were superseded by engravers and electro-plate workers. Many of the buildings are now used as shops, offices, clubs, restaurants and 'clipjoints'.
Notable inhabitants of Gerrard Street who occupied houses not described in the following pages are listed here:
Other occupants whose lodgings cannot be assigned to particular houses include:
Some artists whose addresses are given as being in Gerrard Street in exhibition catalogues, but whose names do not appear in the ratebooks, are listed below, with the years in which they exhibited:
Text extracted from British History Online, a digital library of key printed primary and secondary sources for the history of Britain and Ireland, with a primary focus on the period between 1300 and 1800.
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