Carlisle House, Soho

Carlisle House was the name of two late seventeenth-century mansions in Soho, London, on opposite sides of Soho Square. One, at the end of Carlisle Street, is sometimes incorrectly said to have been designed by Christopher Wren; it was destroyed in the Blitz. The other was the location of Madame Cornelys' entertainments in the eighteenth century and was demolished in 1791; part of the site was cleared in 1891 for the building of St. Patrick's church.

This Carlisle House was on the west side of Soho Square, at the end of Carlisle Street. It was probably built between May 1685 and June 1687 by speculative builders, but is often incorrectly attributed to Christopher Wren in the 1660s for the Earls of Carlisle. It was a three-storey house of brown brick with stone band-courses separating the storeys and a triangular pediment ornamented with egg-and-dart moulding below and leaf moulding above. The railings in front were probably a later addition, and fine plasterwork had been added in about 1740 to the staircase and one of the rooms on the first floor.

The house's association with the Carlisles did not begin until 1717 or 1718, when the estranged wife of the third earl inherited it from her mother, the dowager Countess of Essex. Lady Carlisle rented it out from 1718 to 1724 to a James Vernon, possibly either the MP or his son, also an MP, and lived there herself from 1725 until she died in 1752. Her daughter rented it to Thomas Robinson, probably the Secretary of State, and then to the second Baron Chedworth.

In June 1756 the house was bought by John Delaval, later first Baron Delaval, and in March 1764, through a proxy, by Domenico Angelo, the Italian fencing and riding master. He built a riding school in the rear, took in pupils as boarders at 100 guineas (£105) a head, and made the house into London's pre-eminent school of arms and manners. However, he apparently left the house in the early 1780s and after that it was divided between numerous tenants, mostly in the arts, including a wood carver, an art restorer and several prominent painters. A Masonic lodge met in the ballroom.Charles Dickens is thought to have used the house as his model for the lodgings of Dr. Manette and his daughter Lucie in A Tale of Two Cities.

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