What did Soane have to do with the Battle of Britain?

Above: Spitfire and Hurricane outside Bentley Priory, Stanmore ©Wikicommons

The Battle of Britain was masterfully coordinated by Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding from Fighter Command Headquarters at Bentley Priory, Stanmore in London’s Borough of Harrow. The Air Ministry had acquired Bentley Priory and 40 acres of surrounding land in 1926, and it functioned as Fighter Command throughout the Second World War. However, Bentley Priory’s history reaches much further back into the past. There had once been a priory of Augustinian Friars nearby to the south. This fell foul of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s and was sold to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. Passing through various hands, including Henry VIII himself, the estate was acquired in 1766 by James Duberly, a prosperous army contractor-turned-gentleman, who promptly demolished the twelfth-century priory building, and rebuilt a portion of the present Bentley Priory: a modest five-bay brick block on higher ground than the earlier priory building, so as to take advantage of the views overlooking Harrow-on-the-Hill. In 1788 Duberly sold the estate to John James Hamilton (later 9th Earl, 1st Marquess of Abercorn) who commissioned major alteration, rebuilding and improvement to designs by none other than John Soane.

Above: Attributed to John Sanders and Thomas Chawner (Soane office pupils), Bentley Priory, Stanmore: plan of the principal floor showing Soane’s first extension (including the library, breakfast room and tribune) in pink and the earlier block in black, March 1789

Hamilton had probably met Soane through their mutual acquaintance, Thomas Pitt, Lord Camelford – cousin of the then Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger – whom Hamilton knew from Cambridge University, and Soane had met Thomas Pitt on the Grand Tour. In fact, it had been with Soane’s assistance that Hamilton had found the Bentley Priory estate, and purchased it, in the first place – Soane first visited Bentley Priory on 9 August 1788 and persuaded Hamilton to purchase it a fortnight later. Hamilton’s aristocratic inheritance and illustrious political career resulted in Bentley Priory functioning as a centre of social and political activity. As such, improvements were needed to Duberly’s diminutive earlier block. Soane built two major extensions to the east side of the earlier house from 1789. The first extension included a library, breakfast room, and circular top-lit tribune for the display of Hamilton’s art collection, and the second extension included a drawing room, eating room and music room, complete with an inbuilt organ, arranged around the recently completed circular tribune. Each of these rooms made use of Soane’s innovative and fresh mode of interior decoration, with his clean, pared-back form of neo-classicism evident throughout with delicate plasterwork and marble chimneypieces.

Above: Joseph Michael Gandy, Bentley Priory, Stanmore: interior view of the Music Room, August 1798

A third and final phase of work in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries added various domestic and service quarters, a number of outbuildings, and further attempts to improve the exterior, including the construction of a porte cochère to conceal a portion of the unsatisfactory north (principal) front of the house. In all Soane quadrupled the size of the building. The total cost of these works – both exterior and interior – was £27,719.15s. Of that cost, Soane’s fee was a whopping £1,168.16s.2d. However, this money was hard earned. Soane had been closely involved with the construction work, for the majority of which there was no clerk of works, and Soane himself made 110 visits to the site in the period of 1787-93.

Above: Soane office hand, Bentley Priory, Stanmore: topographical elevation of the south front of Soane’s extensions (earlier block shown to the left), c.1818-19, SM 14/1/6

Despite Soane’s efforts to improve and conceal a portion of the exterior of the house, and establish a symmetrical façade, the building was always a little disjointed, resulting in a somewhat incoherent architectural whole. This was doubtless caused by the piecemeal development of the building. And thus Soane’s usually elegant attenuated style, here appears fragmented and sparce. The principal (north) and garden (south) fronts of his extension were particularly disappointing to Soane, especially in their marked variance with the more successful interior of new, elegant entertainment spaces within. This is perfectly illustrated by Soane’s discussion of the house after Abercorn’s death in 1818 in his tenth lecture at the Royal Academy, given to his architectural students:

Will such an exterior as this drawing represents [see above] lead any person to imagine it to be one of the principal fronts of a nobleman’s residence? Does it not rather indicate the exterior of an hospital or an extensive manufactory?

Irrespective of Soane’s frustration with the exterior of Bentley Priory, its interior was a triumph. And this was further enhanced by complementary painted decoration in the drawing room and tribune by John Crace from 1802 during the final years of Soane’s involvement with the house. It is particularly frustrating therefore, to know that after Soane fell out with Hamilton over a bill, the next round of alterations to Bentley Priory were made to designs by Robert Smirke in 1812-13, converting Soane’s Music Room (demolished later in the nineteenth century) into a private theatre. Since that time, Bentley Priory has been twice damaged by fire, but each time it was restored, and continued in domestic use, even serving briefly as the home of Dowager Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV, in 1848-49. Italianate-style alterations followed in the 1860s for the Victorian contractor and engineer Sir John Kelk, who added wings to the east and west, refaced the exterior with render and a portico, and added a clock tower. In 1882 it became a hotel, but this was an unsuccessful venture, and from 1908 it became a school for 70 girls, but again, this was short lived as Bentley Priory was sold to the Air Ministry in 1926.

During the Second World War Bentley Priory housed 76 officers, 71 airmen and 84 civilian staff, while the exterior was camouflaged in green and brown paint, and cedars around the house were felled to give an all-round field of fire for anti-aircraft guns. Soane’s drawing room was the first Operations Room of wartime Fighter Command, but in time a new Operations Room was created 42 feet below ground to the west of the house. Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding’s office was located in Soane’s library. After the Second World War, Bentley Prior continued as a Royal Air Force station, but in 2008 this was closed. The grounds and much of Bentley Priory itself have been redeveloped to provide residential housing. However, the important ground-floor rooms of the house were converted into the Bentley Priory Museum, which celebrates the story of the house’s role in the Battle of Britain.

Above: The Tribune, Bentley Priory, Stanmore ©Wikicommons

What Soane would have made of aerial warfare, or that one of his buildings – albeit one which looked like a ‘hospital or an extensive manufactory’ – should take such a central role in defending the nation in 1940, is difficult to imagine. With his great interest in new technology, such notions would surely have captivated Soane’s mind, even if they did seem impossibly futuristic; verging on science fictional.

A collection of 178 drawings from Soane’s works at Bentley Priory survive at Sir John Soane’s Museum. These have been photographed and catalogued and can be seen on the Soane Museum’s collections online page here.

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Written by Frances Sands, Curator of Drawings and Books, Sir John Soane's Museum