CabbieBlog

Quality Street

A rare view of Buckingham Street, by John Niemann, 1854,
where Dickens lived briefly in 1834. David Copperfield lived here too.
Note the York Water Gate in the background, still visible today.

In a little backwater between the rear of the Savoy Hotel and Charing Cross Station there is a small cul-de-sac which once ran down to the river’s edge. On the site that once stood York House former mansion of the Dukes of Buckingham, its 20 or so houses look for all the world like a street of small mid-Georgian period houses that can be found all over central London.

Buckingham Street was built before 1680 by Nicholas Barbon London’s first speculative builder. What makes this little unprepossessing street so unique are the sheer number of celebs who once lived here, so many that a whole series of that unlamented television series ‘Through The Keyhole’ could be devoted to these twenty-one houses.

The houses at the northern end of Buckingham Street are smaller than those nearer the river and have been used for many years for commercial purposes.

According to The London Encyclopaedia a Who’s Who of Buckingham Street has among its former residents:

Number 9: Beauty and one of the greatest actresses of the 18th century, Peg Woffington and Laurence Holker Potts inventor of the piling system for building foundations carried out experiments in his workshop there.

Number 10: Was once home to Scottish philosopher and Father of the Enlightenment David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, later postimpressionist painter Henri Rousseau resided there as did Thomas Russell Crampton, engineer who laid the first submarine cable between Dover and Calais.

Number 11: Groom of the Bedchamber to James II Thomas Bruce, 2nd Earl of Ailesbury also Victorian artist Arthur Rackham once worked there.

Number 12: London’s famous diarist Samuel Pepys. A later occupant was Queen Anne’s Treasurer Robert Harley who invited Jonathan Swift and William Penn to dinner at his home. Mary, Countess of Fauconberg daughter of Oliver Cromwell. The scientist Humphrey Davy carried out some of his most important experiments in the cellar.

Number 13: Dr. William Wellwood who served as physician to King William and Queen Mary and Dr. James Coward who wrote several works on the soul, which were ordered in 1704 to be burnt by the Common Hangman, since the House of Commons considered they contained offensive doctrines. William Jones, mathematician, was a friend and fellow worker of Sir Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley.

Number 14: Samuel Pepys who liked the street so much after nine years at Number 12 he moved next door to Number 14. Robert Harley Speaker of the House of Commons who later became Chancellor of the Exchequer started his book collection here and later the library was bought by the nation for £10,000 and formed a nucleus for the British Museum. Artist George Clarkson Stanfield was born there and fellow artist Charles Calvert had lodging. Sir Humphry Davy famous for his invention of the miner’s lamp.

Number 15: Russian Peter the Great stayed a while although some historians dispute this claim. Authors Henry Fielding, creator of Tom Jones and literary giant Charles Dickens also resided here

Number 19: Lord Drumlanrig, afterwards 2nd Duke of Queensbury who in 1707 was instrumental in bringing about the union of Scotland and England.

Number 21: English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

But most bizarrely of all Napoleon Bonaparte stayed at an unknown house in this same small street.

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