Insuring Grosvenor Square
The final episodes of the latest Bridgerton series are about to drop on Netflix. The fictional Bridgertons and their neighbours, the Featheringtons, live on Grosvenor Square so I’ve been investigating the real properties and people we insured in the square in the Georgian era.
So far, three properties on the square have been mapped on our website amicablecontributors.com and I spotted insurance policies for 24 of the original 51 properties on the square while we were digitizing the Hand in Hand policy registers. These houses, in one of London’s most exclusive neighbourhoods, were occupied by 12 earls, 10 MPs, 5 soldiers, four bishops, three dukes, two viscounts and one royal mistress over the decades they were insured with us. Other residents or owners of properties we insured in the square included a doctor, an author, a painter, an optician, a marquess, a countess, and a future US president.
While later residents of the square were largely members of the nobility, the first insurance on most of the properties was taken out by the entrepreneurial tradesmen who were involved in their construction. The earliest Grosvenor Square property we have found so far, №10 West, was insured by carpenter William Packer in September 1726. Another carpenter, Robert Scott, insured №44 in November that year, bricklayer William Barlow insured the house next door at №43 on the same day, while plasterer Chrisostom Wilkins insured the house at №6 in March 1727. №6 is one of three properties insured by Hand in Hand on the east side of the square, it was covered for £1000 during construction which rose to £1500 when building was completed. The house had been extended by 1743 when cover was £2,500 and it was occupied by Edward Chandler, the wealthy Bishop of Durham.
№3 (a little further south on the same side of the square) was first insured in 1735 by William, Earl of Coventry for £3000 while №7 (next door to the bishop) was insured by the Earl of Essex for £4,500 in 1732. When insurance was renewed by Lieutenant General Charles Montagu in 1770, the property at №7 was valued at £8000 and featured a dressing room for the general and a bed chamber for his wife as well as 12 marble fireplaces and 8 rooms with wainscotting.
The next house insured by Hand in Hand, going anticlockwise around the square, was №9 (originally called №8) on the north side of the square on the corner of the east side of Duke Street. This, slightly more modest house, was first insured in 1767 for £1500. Described as having 3 lofty storeys and garrets, it was still covered by the company in 1785 when American founding father (and future 2nd President of the United States), John Adams moved in with his family while he was ambassador to Great Britain. Ten other properties appear in the Hand in Hand registers on the north side of the square, including №15 which was home to the Bishop of Durham John Egerton, Nos. 17 and 18 homes to the earls of Albemarle and Rockingham respectively and №20 -21 insured by Henry, Duke of Buccleugh for £12000 in 1767 and described as “Finished in a grand manner”.
The occupant at №12, William Aislabie, took out insurance for £2000 in 1749 for the property (the 4th west from Duke Street) with a further £600 on the stables. Aislabie, who was an MP and landscape gardener, knew well the dangers of fire and the value of insurance having escaped the flames which destroyed his family home in Red Lion Square in 1701. The fire, which reputedly cost his father £20,000 (including possessions which were looted), killed his mother and sister. William, who was a baby at the time, was only saved by being thrown from an upstairs window to be caught by the crowds below.
Hand in Hand insured five properties on the west side of the square, including the Duke of Manchester’s home at №29 and the house next door at №28 which was covered for £2400 in 1764 when it was described as being 4 storeys high with 15 rooms wainscoted, 14 marble chimney pieces and a staircase finished in a grand manner. This house was occupied by father and son both called Robert Rich. Both men were soldiers; the elder Robert was wounded in the battles of Schellenberg and Blenheim while his son lost his left hand and almost his right forearm as well as suffering several sword wounds to his head at Culloden. Another house on the west side of the square, №24, was also occupied by a military gentleman, Lord Nassau Powlett, and was renewed in 1770 for £4000 when it was described as having 4 lofty storeys, a kitchen, bow window, arcade room, and a larder under the yard — “The house very richly & elegantly finished”.
Our final house on this side of the square was №30 which belonged to the so-called Miser of Acton, William Jennens. Jennens, despite his house on Grosvenor Square, reputedly lived in unfinished rooms at Acton Place near Long Melford in Suffolk and was described as the richest commoner in England leaving an estimated fortune of £2 million on his death in 1798. Jennens had not signed his will and died intestate; although his property was soon allocated to his closest relatives the size of the potential inheritance attracted many legal claims from people with the surname Jennens or Jennings who thought they could be eligible for a share. Many of the claimants were based in America and the legal challenges continued for more than a century after his death.
Hand in Hand insured six properties on the remaining side of the square. Homes on the south side which appear in the registers include the corner house at №35 which was later became the home of the radical journalist, John Wilkes, and №37 which was occupied successively by the Earl of Scarborough, Baron De La Warr, and Lord Guernsey. This property was insured in 1757 by Francis Watkins, optician to the Prince and Princess of Wales, and in 1764 by Charles, 5th Duke of Bolton who committed suicide in the house the following year. When insurance was renewed in 1771, the policy, (which included cover for library that a later Hand in Hand clerk mistakenly copied as a dairy), was in the name of Mary Bankes Brown who had been the duke’s housekeeper and bore him two illegitimate children.
№40, also on the south side of the square, was insured by the army officer and MP George Carpenter in October 1726 for £2000 and another MP, Heneage, Earl of Aylesford, lived at №44 which had first been insured by the carpenter Robert Scott for £1200 in 1726. The property was covered for £4000 by 1790 when insurance was renewed by the earl’s widow, Charlotte. The couple had 12 children, so it was probably just as well that the Grosvenor Square property included a cold bath with a leaded roof — the only property I have spotted so far for which specified cover included a bathroom.
Our final property, next door at №43, was the house first insured by bricklayer William Barlow in 1726. In December 1727 it was assigned to the Most Noble Evergard [Ehrengard] Duchess of Kendal. The duchess was a long-term mistress of King George I who had followed him to England when he acceded to the thrown and was mocked in the press for her height and figure (being known as the maypole or the lamppost). She lived in the Grosvenor Square property with her illegitimate daughter by the King, Petronilla Melusina, Countess of Walsingham, until her death in 1743. The house then passed to the Maynard family of viscounts who insured it up to 1811 during which time it was also occupied by the Bishops of Worcester and Winchester and by the widow of Sir Robert Grosvenor 6th baronet whose brother-in-law, the 4th baronet Sir Richard Grosvenor, had first developed the square and whose descendants, the current Dukes of Westminster, now own it.
