• Source: Montagu House, Whitehall

Montagu House in Whitehall, Westminster, London, England, was the town house built by John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu (1690–1749), whose country seat was Boughton House in Northamptonshire.




History


In 1731, John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu, abandoned the existing grand Montagu House in the socially declining district of Bloomsbury, which was later to become the premises of the British Museum, and purchased a site that had once been occupied by the Archbishops of York's London residence and had later been part of the site of Whitehall Palace. He built himself a relatively modest mansion in the conventional style of the day, which can be seen in Canaletto's painting of Whitehall.
In the late 1850s, the 2nd Duke of Montagu's descendant, Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch, one of the United Kingdom's three or four richest landowners, replaced the Georgian house with one of the grandest private mansions in London. It was designed by the versatile Scottish architect William Burn in the style of a French Renaissance chateau. The building was admired in its day. It was built of Portland stone, with a steep mansard roof, corner towers and a skyline peppered with stone chimneys. The interior featured a top-lit central saloon and a grand staircase, heavily coffered ceilings and elaborately carved furnishings. It housed part of the exceptional Buccleuch art collection, including works by Rubens and Rembrandt and the finest British collection of miniatures apart from the Royal Collection. Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, was born there in 1901.
In 1917 the house was taken over for use as government offices, and in 1949–50 it was demolished. The site forms roughly the southern half of that of the current main Ministry of Defence building in Whitehall.




See also


Montagu House, Bloomsbury
Montagu House, Portman Square
Montagu House, Blackheath
List of demolished buildings and structures in London
Noble Households – book with Montagu House, Whitehall, inventory of 1746




References






Further reading


Murdoch, Tessa (ed.), Noble Households: Eighteenth-Century Inventories of Great English Houses. A Tribute to John Cornforth. Cambridge: John Adamson, 2006, pp. 85–116 ISBN 978-0-9524322-5-8 OCLC 78044620
Pearce, David, London's Mansions: The Palatial Houses of the Nobility. London: B. T. Batsford, 2001, originally published in 1986 ISBN 978-0-7134-8702-2 OCLC 46984772




External links


Montagu House at the Survey of London online.
Plans of the ground and principal floors

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Montagu House, Bloomsbury
• Putri Alice, Adipatni Gloucester
• Daftar tokoh Inggris
• Oliver Cromwell
• Montagu House, Whitehall
• Montagu House
• Montagu House, Bloomsbury
• House of Montagu
• William Montagu Douglas Scott, 6th Duke of Buccleuch
• John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu
• Duke of Buccleuch
• Charlotte Montagu Douglas Scott, Duchess of Buccleuch
• John Montagu Douglas Scott, 7th Duke of Buccleuch
• Elizabeth Scott, Duchess of Buccleuch (1743–1827)