place

Orchard Court

Hotels in LondonSpecial Operations Executive

Orchard Court is an apartment block situated on the eastern side of Portman Square in London. Apartment number six was used by F section of the Special Operations Executive as an office for briefing agents during the Second World War.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Orchard Court (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Orchard Court
Portman Square, London Marylebone

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Orchard CourtContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.516 ° E -0.1546 °
placeShow on map

Address

Hammond Philips

Portman Square 6
W1H 6NA London, Marylebone
England, United Kingdom
mapOpen on Google Maps

Share experience

Nearby Places

Home House
Home House

Home House is a Georgian town house at 20 Portman Square, London. James Wyatt was appointed to design it by Elizabeth, Countess of Home in 1776, but by 1777 he had been dismissed and replaced by Robert Adam. Elizabeth left the completed house on her death in 1784 to her nephew William Gale, who in turn left it to one of his aunts, Mrs Walsh, in 1785. Its later occupants included the Marquis de la Luzerne during his time as French ambassador to the Court of St. James's (1788 to 1791), the 4th Duke of Atholl (1798 to 1808), the 4th Duke of Newcastle (1820 to 1861), Sir Francis Henry Goldsmid (1862 to 1919), and Lord and Lady Islington (1919 to 1926). In 1926, it was leased by Samuel Courtauld to house his growing art collection. On his wife's death in 1931, he gave the house and the collection to the fledgling Courtauld Institute of Art (which he had played a major part in founding) as temporary accommodation. A permanent accommodation was not forthcoming, and the Institute remained in the building until 1989, when it moved to its present home of Somerset House. Home House then remained vacant for seven years, until it was acquired by Berkeley Adam Ltd. The building has been a private members' club since 1998. It was extended to include No. 21, as well as the original Nos. 19 and 20, in 2010. It was home to artwork by Zaha Hadid in the form of a Cocktail Bar prior to its refurbishment in 2020. Home House was appointed a Grade I listed building in 1954.

Wallace Collection
Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection is a museum in London occupying Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford. It is named after Sir Richard Wallace, who built the extensive collection, along with the Marquesses of Hertford, in the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection features fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with important holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms and armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries. It is open to the public and entry is free.It was established in 1897 from the private collection mainly created by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800–1870), who left both it and the house to his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace (1818–1890), whose widow Julie Amelie Charlotte Castelnau bequeathed the entire collection to the nation. The collection opened to permanent public view in 1900 in Hertford House, and remains there to this day. A condition of the bequest was that no object should ever leave the collection, even for loan exhibitions. However in September 2019, the board of trustees announced that they had obtained an order from the Charity Commission for England & Wales which allowed them to enter into temporary loan agreements for the first time.The United Kingdom is particularly rich in the works of the ancien régime, purchased by wealthy families during the revolutionary sales, held in France after the end of the French Revolution. The Wallace Collection, Waddesdon Manor and the Royal Collection, all three located in the United Kingdom, are some of the largest, most important collections of French 18th-century decorative arts in the world, rivalled only by the Musée du Louvre, Château de Versailles and Mobilier National in France. The Wallace Collection is a non-departmental public body and the current director is Xavier Bray.