3-100-949 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Old Houses in Great Queen Street, c1879. "Great Queen Street, built about 1629 from the designs of either Inigo Jones or his pupil, Webb, was so called from Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I. The street was then...occupied by people of rank. Here was Conway House, the residence of the noble family of that name. Here lived the Marquis of Winchester, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the Marquis of Worcester, and the Earl of Bristol...An illustration, dated 1817...shows a row of private houses with a uniform front, having three doorways and twelve pilasters, ending towards the west with two over a gateway, as in the photograph." Description by Alfred Marks. Dixon's photograph shows the remains of what was originally a much larger house dating from 1637, the home of the Earl of St Albans. The house was later divided internally and stables, coach houses and workshops were built. Then, after further divisions and alterations, the eastern half of the house was demolished in the 1840s. This photograph concentrates on the surviving original exterior, the upper storeys showing the Corinthian pilasters, stone bases and carved capitals and the remains of decorative brickwork between the first and second floor windows. Sign reads: 'E. Wolff & Son - Steam Pencil Works'.