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Fauconberg House

Buildings and structures demolished in 1924Former houses in the City of WestminsterRobert Adam buildingsSoho Square

Fauconberg House was a house in Soho Square in the City of Westminster, London. It was demolished in 1924. The house was occupied from 1683 to 1700 by Thomas Belasyse, 1st Earl Fauconberg. The last member of the Fauconberg family to live at the house was Mary Cromwell; she was the third daughter of Oliver Cromwell and the wife of the 1st Earl Fauconberg.Subsequently it was occupied by Arthur Onslow, then Speaker of the House of Commons. The lease was sold by Onslow to John Campbell, 4th Duke of Argyll. The Duke of Argyll lived at Fauconberg House until his death in 1770; following his death, it was sold to John Grant, a Scottish lawyer and owner of sugar plantations in the West Indies. The neo-classical architect Robert Adam was commissioned by Grant to improve the house. After Grant's death, Fauconberg House became Wright's Hotel and Coffee House.The house belonged to a company of musical instrument makers at the start of the 19th century, and was owned by Crosse & Blackwell from 1858. Fauconberg House was demolished by Crosse & Blackwell in 1924, and their new headquarters was built on the site.

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

Fauconberg House
Soho Square, London Soho

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N 51.5156 ° E -0.1315 °
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Soho Square 21
W1D 3QR London, Soho
England, United Kingdom
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Soho Square
Soho Square

Soho Square is a garden square in Soho, London, hosting since 1954 a de facto public park let by the Soho Square Garden Committee to Westminster City Council. It was originally called King Square after Charles II, and a much weathered statue of the monarch has stood in the square, with an extended interruption, since 1661, one year after the restoration of the monarchy. Of the square's 30 buildings (including mergers), 16 are listed (have statutory recognition and protection). During the summer, Soho Square hosts open-air free concerts. By the time of the drawing of a keynote map of London in 1746 the newer name for the square had gained sway. The central garden and some buildings were owned by the Howard de Walden Estate, main heir to the Dukedom of Portland's great London estates.At its centre is a listed mock "market cross" building, completed in 1926 to hide the above-ground features of a contemporary electricity substation; small, octagonal, with Tudorbethan timber framing. During the king's statue's absence through intercession of resident business Crosse & Blackwell it was a private garden feature at Grim's Dyke, a country house where it was kept by painter Frederick Goodall then by dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator W. S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. Initial residents were relatively significant landowners and merchants. Some of the square remains residential. From the 1820s to the 1860s, at least eleven artists recently qualified for major exhibitions were resident aside from permanent residents, some of whom were more accomplished artists, as comprised in the local rate books; by the end of that century charities, music, art and other creative design businesses had taken several premises along the square. A legacy of creative design and philanthropic occupants lingers including the British Board of Film Classification, 20th Century Studios UK, Dolby Europe Ltd, Tiger Aspect Productions, Saint Patrick's Catholic Church which provides many social outreach projects to local homeless and addicts, the French Protestant Church of London (by architect Aston Webb) and the House of St Barnabas, a members' club since 2013, which fundraises and hosts events and exhibitions for homelessness-linked good causes.

Tottenham Court Road chiller

In the 1930s, London Transport Board installed an experimental refrigeration plant on the London Underground at Tottenham Court Road Underground station. The plant was operational between 1938 and 1949. The experimental plant was built because temperature measurements through the 1930s showed that the Underground was steadily getting warmer. Although the temperatures were not at unsafe levels (peaks of 82 °F / 27.8 °C occurred at a few stations in summertime), the LTB perceived that if the trend continued, cooling in summer would be required at some time in the future, and it would be sensible to develop suitable technology. The chiller used water as the working fluid. The evaporators consisted of indirect heat exchangers mounted in the platform tunnels which were fed water at just above 0 °C. The condenser was sited in the outflow air path of an existing tunnel cooling fan, which had been installed in a disused lift shaft at the station in 1933. The outgoing air going through the condenser was warmed by 2–3 °C, before being discharged to atmosphere. Two descriptions of the cooling capacity exist. The first (from 1939) gives the capacity as "about half a million British thermal units per hour." The second (1982) states that it was "equivalent to melting approximately 51 tonnes of ice per day." In SI units, these are 146 kW and 197 kW respectively. The experimental plant was not considered a success, mainly because the cooling it provided was at high cost. An extractor fan of the same cooling capacity ('cooling capacity' in the sense that a fan removes warm air in the tunnels and replaces it with cooler air from outside) used up one-eighth of the electricity of the experimental refrigeration plant. Not only that, such a fan was easier to maintain and cost less to install. In the austere post-war years, the electrical power drawn by the chiller could not be justified. It was used intermittently during the 1940s, and was decommissioned in 1949.