About Us

Chandos House, a Grade 1 listed building, was designed and built by Robert and James Adam, the most prominent Scottish architects in Georgian Britain. The House is very important as a prototype for their later grand houses, such as 20 St. James's Square and Derby House.

Chandos House was built speculatively, with monies from the Adam family and from the banker Sir George Colebrooke, another Adam client. It was started in 1769 and finished in 1771 on a plot stretching from Duchess Street south to the junction of Queen Anne Street and Chandos Street, which then belonged to the 2nd Duke of Portland.

The façade is of Craigleath stone, perhaps as an advert for the quarry to the west of Edinburgh on which the Adam brothers’ firm had recently taken a lease. It repeatedly failed to sell, and was even put up for sale by the Auctioneers Christies in June 1772, who described it as "a most capital and elegant leasehold mansion, with beautiful stone front…six noble spacious rooms on a floor, a grand staircase…and water closets to the different Apartments."

Whilst unsold, James Adam, Robert’s younger brother had to pay an annual rate of four pence to the parish. Eventually James Brydges, the third and last Duke of Chandos acquired the lease to the property in 1774 for £11,000. His diary survives in the Huntingdon Library in San Marino, California, and under the date 14 October 1774 he wrote ‘Lay the first Time in my new house in Chandos Street’.

In 1813 it was still home to the Duchess of Chandos, whom the Duke had married as his second wife in 1777. However, following the sudden death of the Duke in 1789, the Duchess, Anna Eliza Brydges, was declared a lunatic. As a consequence she was confined to the house and lost control of her estates. In May 1815 the unexpired portion of the lease (51 years) was sold by her executors and purchased by the Austro-Hungarian Embassy.

The first resident Ambassador was Prince Esterhazy and for the next 25 years Chandos House was the scene of entertainment on the most lavish scale. Contemporary newspapers record his wasteful splendour and oriental pomp.
Eventually his extravagance proved his ruin. He left the Embassy in 1842 and was succeeded by Baron Neumann (1843-1846), Count Dietrichstein (1847-1849), Count Colloredo-Waldsee (1850 and 1852-1856), Count Buol (1851-1852) and Count Apponyi (1856-1866).

The Embassy’s lease on Chandos House expired before the end of Count Apponyi’s term of office and was not renewed. The Count claimed the house was ‘old and sadly in need of repair’ but it may have been that he simply wanted to move to a more fashionable part of London. This allowed the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos (a descendant through marriage of the third Duke of Chandos) to acquire a 99-year lease on the property in 1866. He lived there only a short while, but it remained in the possession of the family until the end of the century, although it was sub-let to a member of the Dering family for a short period.

In 1890 the lease was signed to William Stephen, Earl Temple, the Duke’s nephew, who died in 1902, and brought to an end the Chandos connection. Cora, Countess of Strafford took over the lease in 1905, then from 1924-1927 the Earl of Shaftesbury sublet the property, and in 1927 the tenancy passed to the newspaper tycoon, Sir James Gomer Berry, Viscount Kemsley. It was used as a family home by Lord and Lady Kemsley and at this time was the finest example of an Adam house remaining in private ownership.