3-101-153 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Ashburnham House - Exterior, c1882. Seventeenth-century house on Little Dean's Yard in Westminster, London. 'The house is supposed to have been built for one of the Ashburnham family, probably for John Ashburnham, the attendant on Charles I. At all events it was in the possession of the family at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Hatton's New View, II., 623), and so remained till 1730, when it was purchased by the Crown, of John, the third Lord and first Earl. The Cottonian Manuscripts were kept here, when in October, 1731, a fire broke out which nearly proved fatal to the entire collection...In 1739 the house came into the possession of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, who have lately been deprived of it by the operation of the Public Schools Act of 1868. The upper storey is a recent addition, as may be seen by comparison of the photograph with a plate dated 1808, in J. T. Smith's Westminster.' Marks had sought permission for photography of Ashburnham House as soon it was known the building was under threat. He hoped that "numerous and weighty protests" had successfully enlightened the new owners (Westminster School purchased it in 1881) as to the archaeological and artistic interest of Ashburnham House and thus prevented its destruction.