Albany Courtyard, W1B

Melbourne House had been built between 1771 and 1776 by Sir William Chambers for the newly created 1st Viscount Melbourne. Melbourne had bought a house – Piccadilly House – and its land from Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland for £16 500. The new house was called Melbourne House and was a three-storey mansion, seven bays wide. It had a pair of service wings flanking a front courtyard.

Twenty years later, Lord Melbourne had built up considerable debt funding a particularly extravagant lifestyle. In 1791 he downsized by exchanging Melbourne House for Dover House in Whitehall with the recently married Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany. He wanted a larger property in order to “entertain in style”.

Only ten years after that, in 1802 the Duke in turn gave up the house and it was converted into 69 bachelor apartments (known as “sets”) by Henry Holland. The main block and its two service wings was subdivided. Two new parallel long buildings were built over the garden, running as far as Burlington Gardens. Most sets are accessed off common staircases without doors, in the same manner as Oxbridge colleges and the Inns of Court.





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