Apsley House

'Number 1 London', the grandest address in the capital. This beautiful Georgian building  was the home of the first Duke of Wellington, and the interior has changed little since then.
Located on the edge of the city with the Royal Park at the back and just outside the toll gates at Knightsbridge with “fine views over to the Surrey and Kent hills”, as Thomas Shepard’s popular guide ‘London in the Nineteenth Century’ noted, it enjoyed one of the finest settings in London. Sadly now it competes with non-stop traffic around Hyde Park corner.

Apsley House was built in the 1770's for Henry Bathurst, 1st Baron Apsley. In 1807 the house was purchased by Marquess Wellesley, elder brother to Arthur Wellesley, but in 1817 financial difficulties forced the Marquess to sell Apsley to his more famous sibling the Duke of Wellington (Waterloo and Napoleon). Wellington engaged the architect Benjamin Dean Wyatt to restore and enlarge the house. Wyatt wrote to the Duke saying: “I have carefully examined it throughout. It certainly is an excellent house, and in very good repair. It is as substantial and as well built as any house need be, and it is splendid without containing any superfluous room.” Despite Wyatt’s report being very favourable, Wellington decided that the house was in need of expansion and refurbishment, he carried out restorations to create a residence worthy of housing his growing art collection - and also serve as a London base for his political ambitions. Successive generations of the Dukes of Wellington lived at Apsley until the house was finally gifted to the nation in 1947. Today, English Heritage maintains the house.

The ground floor houses the grand state rooms, and a broad staircase leads to the first floor. The current Duke's own relatively simply quarters are on the third floor.
Once again photography was not allowed, but once again I sneaked a few. I'm getting quite good at this now!!.....

The Staircase
Napoleon as Mars the Peacekeeper Antonio Canova (1757-1822)
Commissioned by Napoleon in 1802 this colossal statue of the Emperor was sculpted by Canova in Rome. Completed in 1806 the statue did not arrive in Paris until 1811. It was unveiled at the Musée de Napoleon (now the Louvre), however Napoleon didn't like it, he declared it was ‘too athletic’. It was packed away and eventually brought to England as a gift to the Duke. This was the only place in the house big enough for the statue. The wine cellar underneath had to be strengthened to support its 3-ton weight! 

On the walls in the Striped Drawing Room room are portraits of officers who fought alongside the Duke at Waterloo. Above the fireplace is a famous portrait of Wellington by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and on the opposite wall hangs a dramatic oil painting called ‘The Battle of Waterloo’ painted by Sir William Allen

Postcard of the Drawing Room

There are nearly 3,000 fine paintings, exquisite furnishings, sculptures and works of art in silver and porcelain, gifts from emperors, tsars, and kings to Britain's greatest military hero. The art collection is one of the finest in London with paintings by Velazquez and Rubens

The paintings in the Piccadilly Drawing Room include the ‘Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch’ by Sir David Wilkie. The people in the painting have just received the dispatch from the Duke about his victory at the Battle of Waterloo. The Duke wrote it the day after the battle. Two soldiers carried the letter by a fast horse-drawn carriage to the coast, then by boat to Kent, then horse and carriage to London.

The Portico Drawing Room contains some lovely objects, two portraits of Napoleon and one of his wife, Josephine, some of Wellington’s belongings including a telescope and some hair from the mane of his horse Copenhagen.

Postcard of the Waterloo Gallery

The Waterloo Gallery, described as "one of the great interiors of Britain", is huge, it's the width of the house and is where the Duke held his annual Waterloo banquets, seating up to 85 guests at a long table. There is a large painting in an adjoining room that gives an idea of what the banquets might have been like. The gallery was designed in an opulent gilded Louis XIV style, with seven mirrored window shutters inspired by the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles". The mirrors were hidden behind the walls during the day and slid across at night. The windows provided natural light during the day and the mirrors reflected light from the chandeliers and torchieres at night, keeping the Waterloo Gallery and its valuable paintings well lit at any time of the day.

On the walls of the dining room hang portraits of six kings and emperors of Europe at the time of the Battle of Waterloo. They are all standing in a way that makes them look powerful and wearing their best outfits/accessories. Each ruler is holding an object and has a scene behind him, which tells us something about who he is and what he has achieved.

The Museum Room groans with a stunning collection of presents and trophies given to the Duke after his triumph at the Battle of Waterloo. Such was the relief of the whole of Europe to be rid of the tyranny of France he was showered with  gifts from all over the world,  Prussian and Saxon dinner services, field marshals’ batons and an Egyptian dinner service. The room is dominated by a Portuguese Centrepiece, part of a 1,000 piece dinner service gifted to Wellington in 1816 from the Portuguese nation in honour of the Duke’s victory over the French in Portugal during the Peninsular Wars. It took 150 men four years to produce and arrived in London in 1817 in 55 crates. The room was dark so I didn't try to sneak a photo!

The cellar houses an exhibition of military memorabilia, including Napoleon's death mask and medals awarded to Wellington by grateful heads of state across Europe. 

Apsley House faces Wellington Arch, a triumphal gateway intended as a ceremonial gate to the city of London. It was once topped by a controversial statue of Wellington on his horse Copenhagen, which was thought to be ugly and disproportionate to the arch. The government demanded that it should be taken down, but Wellington declared that he would regard the removal of the figure as a clear mark of royal disfavour, and would feel obliged to resign all his public posts, including that of commander-in-chief. Because of the duke’s immense prestige the Queen and government backed down.

In 1880 the incoming Liberal government adopted a scheme to make a new road, cutting the corner between Piccadilly and Grosvenor Place, which involved moving the Arch to a new site a short distance to the south-east, facing down Constitution Hill. The President and Academics of the Royal Academy urged the government to take the opportunity to remove the statue.

In 1891 the sculptor Adrian Jones, a former army veterinary captain who specialised in animal figures, exhibited a magnificent plaster group at the Royal Academy entitled ‘Triumph’, of a quadriga (a four-horse chariot). The Prince of Wales suggested that it would make a suitable adornment for the rebuilt Wellington Arch.

Initially no funds were available, but eventually a banker, Sir Herbert Stern, made an anonymous donation of about £20,000, and from 1908 Jones set to work on a full-size plaster version of his quadriga in his Chelsea studio, with Edward VII taking a personal interest. The final bronze version was erected on top of the arch in January 1912.

The southern pier of the arch was used as a park-keeper’s residence and the northern pier as a police station. In 1886 a telegraph line was laid to the police station, indicating that the rebuilding was complete. The park-keeper’s residence closed in 1937, while the police station, said to be the smallest in London, survived until the late 1950s.

~ Be well ~

Polly x