A LATERAL RETRIBUTION

A Capuchin friary opposite St James s Palace had served the religious needs of Queen Henrietta Maria (1609-1669), who was a French-born, Roman Catholic. In 1707 Queen Anne granted Sarah Duchess of Marlborough a long lease of a site that lay to the east of St James s Palace. The original two-storey Marlborough House (1711) was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The War of the Spanish Succession was then in progress. The building is reputed to have been constructed with Dutch-made bricks. These were supposed to have been used as ballast for the ships that had ferried supplies and men to The Netherlands to help maintain the army that Sarah s husband, the 1^st Duke of Marlborough, was commanding in Europe.

That the House is approached from the side rather than from the front, as Wren s plan had intended, stems from the conduct of the duchess. Blenheim Palace, the Marlboroughs country house in Oxfordshire had been designed by Sir John Vanbrugh. Her grace treated the latter architect in an appalling manner, both failing to pay him money that he was owed and barring him from entering Blenheim s grounds after she had promised him that he would have a residence there. Vanbrugh informed Sir Robert Walpole, the 1^st Lord of the Treasury (Prime Minister), of what had happened. The premier straightened the architect financially and then chose to avenge the man by waging his own vendetta against the duchess, for whom he had no love lost.¹ Marlborough House provided him with a means by which he was able to harry her.

Wren s plan for the building required that two townhouses on the southern side of Pall Mall should be acquired and torn down so that the property could have a formal entrance onto the street. For the interim, its entrance was a gateway to its south that opened out onto St James s Park. Walpole had King George I revoke the duchess s right to have her carriages driven into the park. This stopped her using the entryway. The freeholds of the two properties on Pall Mall were owned by the Crown.² The premier had their leases extended. He then had the lease of one house transferred to his brother and that of the other to one of his own sons, giving the duchess two Walpoles as her neighbours and leaving her with no choice other than to have Marlborough House s tradesmen s gate converted into being its principal entrance.

In 1817 the Churchills lease on Marlborough House expired and, despite heavy hints that the family made, the property reverted to the Crown.

Location: Marlborough Road, SW1A 1DD (blue, yellow)

Website: https://thecommonwealth.org/marlborough-house

¹. During the war, Sir Robert had been a close associate of her husband the 1^st Duke of Marlborough.

². On what is now the site of the United Oxford & Cambridge University Club.

David Backhouse 2024