Seaford House

Seaford House, Belgrave Square, SW1

51°29′57″N 0°9′4″W / 51.49917°N 0.15111°W / 51.49917; -0.15111

Seaford House, previously Sefton House, is a former aristocratic mansion and the largest of the detached town houses sited on each corner of Belgrave Square, London, England. [1] A magnolia stucco building with four main storeys, it is most famed for its interiors (the first floor, or piano nobile, being decorated in Beaux-Arts style).

Early history

Dating from 1842, Sefton House was designed by Philip Hardwick to meet the requirements of the 3rd Earl of Sefton.[2] The town house, with its railings and gate piers, is listed Grade II* for architectural merit.[3] The 3rd and 4th Earls of Sefton enjoyed using it as their London town house; the 5th earl, being an invalid, could not do so and after he died childless in 1901,[4] its lease was sold to William Tebb.

Lord Howard de Walden, also Baron Seaford,[5] acquired the lease of the house in 1902 renaming it Seaford House and installed friezes, panelling, and a staircase of green onyx specially imported from South America.[6]

Later history

Requisitioned by the Wartime Government in 1940, and for a while was used as offices by the Air Ministry, Seaford House was badly damaged by Luftwaffe aerial bombing in October 1940, and rebuilt thereafter (but without the porte-cochère). In 1946, it became the home of the Imperial Defence College, now the Royal College of Defence Studies.

Seaford House is usually open to the public free of charge on Open House Weekend each September and can also be seen on screen. The main vestibule doubled as Titanic's Grand Staircase in the 1979 miniseries SOS Titanic. It was also used in the filming of Upstairs, Downstairs and later of the BBC spy show Spooks. Seaford House stood in as the exterior of the home of Maggie Gyllenhaal's character Nessa Stein in the BBC and SundanceTV television miniseries The Honourable Woman in 2014. It can also be seen (doubling as the US Embassy) in the 2021 film The King's Man.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ Girling, Brian (10 September 2013). Belgravia & Knightsbridge Through Time. Amberley Publishing Limited. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-4456-2684-0.
  2. ^ Avery, Derek (2003). Victorian and Edwardian Architecture. Chaucer. p. 127. ISBN 978-1-904449-02-7.
  3. ^ Historic England, "Seaford House and railings and gate piers (1066459)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 15 February 2016
  4. ^ www.burkespeerage.com
  5. ^ www.library.leeds.ac.uk
  6. ^ Douglas-Home, Jessica (1996). Violet: The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse. Harvill Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-1-86046-269-6.
  7. ^ www.thecinemaholic.com

Bibliography

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