Soho Square Area: Portland Estate, No. 13 Soho Square

No. 13 Soho Square

The early history of the house on this site and of its rebuilding in 1768–9 has been described above with that of No. 12. Lady Coney was living here from at least 1691 to 1692, and Sir Isaac Reboe (or Rebow) from 1696 to at least 1703. Other inhabitants include Sir Comport Fytche, second baronet, 1706–12; Sir Edmund Anderson, fifth baronet, 1713–17; George Mackenzie, third Earl of Cromarty, Jacobite, 1716–60; Colonel Hewitt, 1773–5, and (Sir) George Tuthill, physician, who gave public lectures in the house, 1811–21. (fn. 1)

The stucco facing to the front of this house is mid nineteenth-century work of a similar character to No. 12. Internally, the house differs from No. 12 in being entered from the square and in having a bay window at the rear, but there is again a square stone staircase in the centre and both this and its good wrought-iron balustrade have been little altered (Plate 127b). The stair rises only to the second-floor level, which is marked by a decorated band. A small enclosed wooden staircase gives access to the floor above and this has a gallery to the main stair compartment, which is finished with a modillion cornice and plain ceiling, the roof light having a frieze of festoons and roundels. Some altered late seventeenth-century balustrading, with panelled newels and twisted balusters, has been re-used above the staircase to the basement. As in No. 12, a decorated plaster ceiling survives in the first-floor rear room, the ornament awkwardly contained in its rectangular panel (Plate 131a). In this room, in the one below and in the front room on the first floor, there are enriched modillion cornices and in both first-floor rooms some wide and narrow wooden panelling survives. Due to extensive alterations and partitioning, no room in the house now gives any clear idea of its eighteenth-century appearance.