31, Hill Street, Mayfair, London

Joanna Barker

After Edward Montagu married Elizabeth Robinson in 1742, they lived when in London at his house in Dover Street off Piccadilly, but before long his wife had ambitions to build a new house according to her own designs. The building of 23 (now 31) Hill Street in Mayfair helped to absorb her energies following the tragically early death of their son in 1744. The whole street was a new development, and they were not able to move in until 1748.

The house is four bays wide and four storeys high with a basement. It has been renumbered as no. 31 and is today occupied by a law firm; the ground-floor rooms have been substantially altered but the rooms on the first floor survive, consisting of the ‘Great Room’, a bedchamber and dressing room.

The dressing room, where Mrs Montagu entertained her intimate friends, was designed by herself with the help of her friend, the poet Gilbert West (1703-1756). It was decorated in the popular “Chinoiserie” style, hung with oriental wallpaper and containing Chinese furniture and porcelain. She was delighted with it, writing to her sister in 1750 that “the very curtains are Chinese pictures on gauze, and the chairs Indian fan-sticks with cushions of japan satin painted: as to the beauty of the colouring, it is carried high as possible”. When Anne-Marie Fiquet du Boccage visited in the same year she noted that they had breakfast “in a closet lined with painted paper of Pekin and adorned with the prettiest Chinese furniture”.

Fifteen years later, the rooms were in need of renovation: fashions had moved on and she found the exuberance of the Chinese room too gaudy. In 1766 Mrs Montagu retained the young Robert Adam to redesign the dressing-room, which was henceforth known as the “Silver Room”. Adam’s design was a restrained classical scheme with painted Chinoiserie motifs. (His designs for the ceiling and carpet survive in the collection of the Sir John Soane Museum.)

At the same time that Adam was altering the dressing-room, his competitor, James “Athenian” Stuart, who worked on the house from 1760 to 1772, redesigned the bedroom with a bow window and a ceiling covered with what his client described as “the sweetest Zephirs and Zephirettes”. Stuart was also responsible for redesigning the formal Great Room. Indeed, Montagu was so impressed with Stuart’s designs that she retained him to re-work Adam’s only recently-finished dressing-room; the Chinese features were replaced, and in 1773, Mary Delany expressed surprise that a respectable middle-aged lady like Mrs Montagu could adorn the walls of her dressing-room with “bowers of roses and jessamines entirely inhabited by little Cupids in all their little wanton ways”.

After Edward Montagu’s death in 1775, his wife used her inherited fortune to build a new house at Portman Square, and there was no further development at Hill Street. She finally moved out in October 1781.

The detective work that led to the identification of the Hill Street house and the details of its architectural history was carried out by Rosemary Baird, who published her findings in 2003.

References:

Rosemary Baird, '"The Queen of the Bluestockings": Mrs Montagu’s House at 23 Hill Street Rediscovered', Apollo, vol. 158, no. 498 (Aug 2003). 43-49.

David Pullins, Reassessing Elizabeth Montagu's Architectural Patronage at 23 Hill Street, London, in The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 150, No. 1263 (June 2008), pp. 400-404.

Please note that all dates and location information are provisional, initially taken from the library and archive catalogues. As our section editors continue to work through the material we will update our database and the changes will be reflected across the edition.

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