Victorian Heritage Report

Heritage report · Paul Velluet, 2015–16

The Victorian Stables at 57 Rupert Street

An appraisal of the architectural and historic interest of The Yard, taken from Paul Velluet's reports on the conservation and design aspects of development proposals (February 2015 and January 2016). Paul Velluet, M.Litt., RIBA, IHBC, is a chartered architect who spent fifteen years as Westminster City Council's Principal Urban Design and Conservation Officer and thirteen years as Regional Architect for English Heritage in London.

Soho before The Yard

The Yard sits inside the Soho Conservation Area. This part of Soho, south of Brewer Street, was first built up in the late 17th century, but many sites were rebuilt in the 1880s after Shaftesbury Avenue cut Soho in two. In 1873 a narrow link was opened between the old top of Rupert Street and Great Crown Court, a cluster of three alleyways just south of what is now Brewer Street (then Little Pulteney Street, renamed in 1937).

Between 1883 and 1885 Great Crown Court was demolished completely and the link was widened, extending Rupert Street north to meet Brewer Street directly opposite Walker's Court. Bedford Lemere photographed the old court for the Crown on 20 March 1883, just before it disappeared.

The new buildings of the 1880s

The west side of the new stretch of Rupert Street was built as three groups of buildings: Archer Street Chambers (including The White Horse pub on the corner), today's nos. 45–53 and 55, and nos. 57–63, which turn the corner into Brewer Street as nos. 9 and 11. Nos. 57–63 is a handsome four-storey, eight-bay red-brick front, with a matching four-bay front to Brewer Street.

The entrance to The Yard is the wide opening at the left of the ground floor, framed by granite-faced pilasters with richly carved capitals either side of the iron gates. Matching pilasters frame the doorway at no. 59 and the shops at nos. 61 and 63 Rupert Street and 9 and 11 Brewer Street, though many are now painted over.

The rebuilding was carried out under the Office of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues (the Crown's estate office). According to Bradley and Pevsner's Buildings of England: London 6, Westminster, the shops with flats above on this stretch of Brewer Street were designed by Robert Sawyer for the Crown "for the respectable poor", to specifications by Arthur Cates.

Robert Sawyer's drawings of 1884

Nine ink-and-colour-wash drawings on linen in the National Archives, titled "Proposed premises, Little Pulteney Street and Rupert Street – Mr J.E. Taylor", are signed by Robert Sawyer and dated 26 April 1884. They show this whole block, including The Yard. Kelly's Directory for 1890 lists John Edward Taylor, a provision merchant, at the premises immediately north of the archway.

Taken together with the 1889 Goad insurance plan, the drawings suggest that Taylor's shop, the offices and living space on the floors above, the warehouse in the basement and the stables and carriage houses in the yard behind all formed one business. The shop fronting Rupert Street and Brewer Street was linked directly to the yard.

The plans and sections show the size and arrangement of the stables, carriage houses and hayloft correctly. Some details were built differently, such as the line of the outer stable wall, the window positions and the layout of the upper floor. But the stable fittings uncovered recently match Sawyer's spacing of the stalls and loose box closely. The plan follows good late-Victorian practice for an L-shaped stable, the kind later recommended in J. Wortley Axe's The Horse: Its Treatment in Health and Disease (1905).

The surviving stable posts

Opening-up work in the former stables has revealed two moulded cast-iron posts running from floor to ceiling. They mark the corner of the old loose box and the end of one of the boarded partitions between the stalls. Each post has a slimmer upper section and a thicker lower section. The lower sections have grooves cast into them to hold the ends of timber partitions about six feet and four feet high. Sockets above held the rails for the open iron grilles along the tops of the partitions.

Two loose tethering rings still hang from one of the posts, which carries the heavily overpainted foundry mark "Musgraves London and Belfast Patent". Musgrave was a well-known 19th-century maker of stable posts. Other posts may still survive hidden inside later partitions.

What the 1889 insurance plan shows

Little Pulteney Street became Brewer Street in 1937, and in January 1938 every property in it and in Rupert Street was renumbered, which makes the old directories hard to follow. The earliest Goad insurance plan of the area, from March 1889, records the old numbering and how each building was used.

It shows a connected two-storey building along the west and south sides of the yard, reached from Rupert Street through the archway. It is labelled "Carriage House" with a "Loft over", and "Dwelling" above a large open ground floor. The three wide doorways on each side suggest room for three carriages on the west side and stabling on the south side, presumably for Taylor's business.

This carried on a long Soho tradition. Carriage houses and stables stood in the yards behind these street blocks until the 1880s. Downd's Yard, mapped in 1770, stood on almost exactly the same site as today's yard.

The ground-floor openings facing east across the yard were altered under a scheme approved in 1993, and the gallery along that side was added at the same time. The parapeted upper storeys facing north and east across the yard still keep their original arched door and window openings. The original silver-grey Suffolk brickwork of the rear walls has since been painted over.

The neighbours in 1890

Kelly's Directory for 1890 does not name the business in the yard itself, but it does show the street around it. South of the archway was Belons Dupiez, a French basket-maker. To the north, with fronts on both Rupert Street and Little Pulteney Street and a glazed space at the back probably opening onto the yard, was John Edward Taylor, provision merchant. Nearby were a fishmonger, a baker, a draper, a greengrocer and an oilman, with tenements on the upper floors.

The hayloft: today's upper bar

The ground floor has been altered over the years, but the upper floor still has the original large rectangular hayloft, which is today's upper bar. It runs the full width of the east-facing side of the building, enclosed by three walls of very fine unplastered brickwork, and rises to an open, boarded, timber-trussed roof beneath the hipped slate roof. The other upper rooms were probably built as living quarters and for storing harness, halters and horse-cloths.

The roof carpentry is of extraordinarily fine quality, both in its materials and in how it was made. It is well-seasoned pine, probably from the Baltic, put together with great craftsmanship. Of special interest are the finely made iron stirrups, fixed with gibs and cotters, that strap the king posts of the trusses to the tie-beams.

Why it matters

The building is a very fine example of a type that is fast disappearing from central London: the working buildings that served the grander street-front buildings they belonged to. In conservation terms it is of considerable architectural, historic, social and archaeological interest and significance, and it deserves every effort to make sure it survives unharmed.

Conclusions

The property, including the open yard, is an integral part of the planned rebuilding of the west side of Rupert Street between Archer Street and Brewer Street around 1880. It is a building of particular architectural and historic interest, with carpentry of outstanding quality. As a rare surviving example of carriage houses and stables in Soho, it may merit consideration for statutory listing, and it adds a great deal to the character, appearance and significance of the Soho Conservation Area.

Even without formal designation, the property deserves to be preserved under the heritage policies of the National Planning Policy Framework.

Source: Paul Velluet, M.Litt., RIBA, IHBC, Chartered Architect – "The Yard, 57 Rupert Street, Soho, London W1: an appraisal of the particular architectural and historic interest of the property", February 2016.

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