Albany (London)

"The Albany" redirects here. For the theatre in Deptford, see The Albany Theatre. For other uses, see Albany (disambiguation).

The Albany
The Albany in 2014
Location within Central London
Former names	Melbourne House
Alternative names	Albany
Etymology	Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany
General information
Type	Residential apartment block
Location	Piccadilly, London
Country	United Kingdom
Coordinates
Current tenants	Various
Construction started	1770
Completed	1774
Owner	Various
Design and construction
Architect	Sir William Chambers Henry Holland
Listed Building – Grade I

The Albany, or simply Albany, is an apartment complex in Piccadilly, London.

Building

The Albany was built in 1770–74 by Sir William Chambers for Viscount Melbourne as Melbourne House. It is a three-storey mansion, seven bays (windows) wide, with a pair of service wings flanking a front courtyard. In 1791, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany abandoned Dover House, Whitehall (now a government office), and took up residence. In 1802 the Duke gave up the house and it was converted by Henry Holland into 69 bachelor apartments (known as "sets"). This was achieved by subdividing the main block and the two service wings, and by adding two parallel sets of buildings running the length of the garden.

History

Since its conversion, the Albany has been a well-known and prestigious set of bachelor apartments in London. The residents have included such famous names as the poet Lord Byron and the future Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, and numerous members of the aristocracy.

During the Second World War, one of the buildings received significant damage from a German bomb, but was reconstructed after the war to appear as an exact replica.

Residents no longer have to be bachelors, although children under the age of 14 are not permitted to live there.

Ownership and governance

The apartments or "sets" are individually owned, with the owners known as "Proprietors"; a set that came up for sale in 2007 had an advertised guide price of £2 million.

Around half the sets are owned by Peterhouse, a college of the University of Cambridge. These were acquired by William Stone (1857–1958) during World War 2. Stone, nicknamed the "Squire of Piccadilly", was a former scholar of Peterhouse, a bachelor and a life-long resident of the Albany. He bequeathed 37 sets to the college, along with other endowments.

The Albany is governed by a Board of Trustees on behalf of the Proprietors. The annual rent of a set can be as much as £50,000 and prospective tenants are vetted by a committee before being allowed to take up residence.

Name

File:The Albany by Thomas Shepherd.jpg

Drawing by Thomas H. Shepherd, c.1830

The names "Albany" and "the Albany" have both been used. The rules adopted in 1804 laid down that "the Premises mentioned in the foregoing Articles shall be called Albany". Both names have been used in the 19th and 20th centuries. In a 1958 review of a book about the building, Peace in Piccadilly, The Times wrote, "Albany or the Albany? It has long been a snobbish test of intimate knowledge of the West End. If one was in use, a man could feel superior by using the other. When G. S. Street wrote The Ghosts of Piccadilly in 1907, he said that 'the Albany' was then 'universal', but that to the earliest tenants it was 'Albany'."

In fiction

An early use of the building in fiction was the 1848 novel, The Bachelor of the Albany by Marmion Wilard Savage. Mr Fascination Fledgeby, a moneylender in Charles Dickens' 1865 novel, Our Mutual Friend is described as living there. Several scenes from the book take place in his apartment.

In Oscar Wilde's 1895 play, The Importance of Being Ernest, the character John (Jack) Worthing has a set at the Albany (number B.4), where he lives while staying in London under the assumed name of Ernest. A. J. Raffles, the gentleman burglar created by E. W. Hornung lived at the Albany, as did Roger Sheringham, the amateur detective in the works of Anthony Berkeley Cox, and the adventurer Lord John Roxton of Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel The Lost World. In The Foundling, a 1948 novel by Georgette Heyer, Captain Gideon Ware of the Life Guards rents a set of chambers at the Albany. In the 1949 film Kind Hearts and Coronets, Louis Mazzini takes a small set at Albany as he moves up the social ladder.

In the Major Harry Maxim novels by the late Gavin Lyall, George Harbinger, very senior civil servant, prospective inheritor of "half of Gloucestershire", and Harry's boss and/or co-conspirator, has an apartment at Albany where he lives with his spouse, Annette.

Tenants

The list below is based mainly on the much longer list in the Survey of London. Many tenants were in residence for only a short time, when they were quite young.

• Antony Armstrong-Jones, later 1st Earl of Snowdon, photographer
• Sir Squire Bancroft, actor.
• George Basevi, architect.
• Clifford Bax, poet and playwright.
• Sybille Bedford, writer, lived in Aldous Huxley's servant's room.
• Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor.
• Isaiah Berlin, philosopher.
• Philip Bobbitt, scholar.
• Henry Brougham, later Lord Chancellor.
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton, writer and politician.
• Lord Byron, poet.
• George Canning, politician.
• George Cattermole, artist.
• Bruce Chatwin, writer.
• Alan Clark, historian and politician.
• Sir Kenneth Clark, art historian.
• Keith Coventry, artist.
• Dame Edith Evans, actress.
• William Ewart Gladstone, later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• Bryan Guinness, poet.
• Edward Heath, later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• Georgette Heyer, writer.
• David Nightingale Hicks, interior decorator and designer.
• Henry Holland, architect.
• Aldous Huxley, writer.
• Sir Simon Jenkins, newspaper editor and author.
• Edward Knoblock, playwright and author.
• John Lane, publisher.
• Lord Lee of Fareham, politician.
• Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, historian and politician.
• Lord John Manners, politician.
• John McManus, publisher and travel writer.
• John Morgan, writer on etiquette.
• Malcolm Muggeridge, journalist and broadcaster.
• Sir Harold Nicolson, writer and politician.
• J.B. Priestley, writer.
• Terence Rattigan, playwright.
• Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP for North East Somerset.
• John Richardson, art critic.
• Baroness Pauline de Rothschild, socialite, writer, fashion designer.
• Roger Scruton, philosopher.
• Sebastian Shaw, actor.
• Michael Sherard, fashion designer.
• Sir Robert Smirke, architect.
• Terence Stamp, actor.
• Lord Stanley, politician, later 15th Earl of Derby.
• Martin Stevens, politician, MP for Fulham.
• William Henry Fox Talbot, pioneer photographer.
• Herbert Beerbohm Tree, actor-manager.

External links

• "London’s Best and Most Secretive Address", by CHRISTOPHER GIBBS, The New York Times Magazine, April 14, 2013
• Survey of London—detailed history with plans and photographs
• Page on georgianindex.net—but note that the picture at the top of the page is not the Albany. While a number of the residences of past Dukes of York have been known as York House (including the Albany during the residence of Frederick Duke of York), the illustration is of the past York House which went on to acquire an extra storey and to be renamed Stafford House and then Lancaster House