Bedford House also called Russell House was the Elizabethan and Jacobean London home of the Russell family, Earls of Bedford, situated on the site of the present Southampton Street on the north side of the Strand.Manolo Guerci. London's Golden Mile: The Great Houses of the Strand (Yale, 2021), p. 105. It was demolished in 1704 after the family had relocated to Bloomsbury.
Origins The site was on or adjacent to the lodging or Inn of the Bishops of Carlisle on the south side of the Strand.James Howell, Londinopolis (London, 1657), p. 349.Manolo Guerci. London's Golden Mile: The Great Houses of the Strand (Yale, 2021), p. 108. John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford acquired the land, Longacre, in May 1552 at the fall of Protector Somerset.E.J. Burford, Wits, Wenchers and Wantons: London's Low Life: Covent Garden in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1986), pp. 1–3. The Russell family already had a house on the south side of the Strand, with land running down to the Thames near Ivybridge Street. This property passed to Bridget Hussey, the widow of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, and was sold.Gladys Scott Thomson, Life In A Noble Household 1641-1700 (London, 1950), p. 37. Bedford House was built in the years before 1590 for the young Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford, and wife, Lucy, Russell, Countess of Bedford. Only small dwellings and stables are known to have existed on the site previously.Manolo Guerci. London's Golden Mile: The Great Houses of the Strand (Yale, 2021), p. 110.
Architecture The house on the north side of the Strand was constructed of timber,See, 'Plan of Bedford House around the year 1690', external links. perhaps by Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford directed by his aunt and guardian Anne Russell, Countess of Warwick,Marion O'Connor, 'Godly Patronage: Lucy Harington Russell, Countess of Bedord', Johanna Harris & Elizabeth Scott-Baumann The Intellectual Culture of Puritan Women, 1558–1680 (Palgrave, 2010), p. 71. in the early 1590s.Lesley Lawson, Out of the Shadows: The Life of Lucy, Countess of Bedford (London, 2007), p. 21. Anne Russell made over household goods and "all manner of implements" at Bedford House the young earl in 1593.Manolo Guerci. London's Golden Mile: The Great Houses of the Strand (Yale, 2021), p. 110. Sir Robert Cecil built Cecil House (or Salisbury House) next door.Manolo Guerci, 'Salisbury House in London, 1599-1694: The Strand Palace of Sir Robert Cecil', Architectural History, 52 (2009), pp. 31-78.
There was a forecourt on the Strand for arriving coaches. The garden had a brick wall with a terrace walk,Peter Cunningham, A Handbook for London: Past and Present, vol. 1 (London, 1849), pp. 71-2. and a "wilderness".Gladys Scott Thomson, Life In A Noble Household 1641-1700 (London, 1950), p. 239.
The main reception rooms of the house included a gallery known as the terrace room overlooking the walk, and another long gallery faced the forecourt and the Strand. The servants were lodged in rooms in the top floor.Gladys Scott Thomson, Life In A Noble Household 1641-1700 (London, 1950), p. 38 There were summer houses with domed roofs for banquetting in the garden.Willis's Current Notes, vol. 5 no. 51 (March 1855), pp. 17-8 citing an engraving by Bernard Lens of the return of William III in 1690.
Residents According to Lady Anne Clifford, Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick died at Bedford House in 1590. Her father, George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, was staying at the house at this time.Jessica L. Malay, Anne Clifford's Autobiographical Writing, 1590-1676 (Manchester, 2018), p. 250.
Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford sometimes used Bedford House, and the marriage of her cousin Mary Sutton Dudley to the Scottish Earl of Home was held there on 11 July 1605. In 1616 the Countess of Bedford stayed at Bedford House because it was conveniently near to Whitehall Palace, where she could attend on Anne of Denmark.Joanna Moody, Correspondence of Lady Cornwallis Bacon (Cranbury NJ, 2003) p. 84.
Lucy, Countess of Bedford, frequently resided at another London residence, Harington House in Bishopsgate.Manolo Guerci. London's Golden Mile: The Great Houses of the Strand (Yale, 2021), p. 112. Lady Bedford had another London residence, Fisher's Folly, which was known as Harington House after 1616.Marion O'Connor, 'Godly Patronage', Johanna Harris & Elizabeth Scott-Baumann, The Intellectual Culture of Puritan Women (Palgrave, 2011), p. 78. She also had a lodging at the royal palaces where the queen resided.Jessica L. Malay, Anne Clifford's Autobiographical Writing, 1590-1676 (Manchester, 2018), pp. 49, 81.
In April 1619 Lady Bedford stayed at Bedford House while the ladies in waiting watched the body of Anne of Denmark at Somerset House.Jessica L. Malay, Anne Clifford's Autobiographical Writing, 1590-1676 (Manchester, 2018), p. 81. Later in that year, she transferred much of the Russell estate to the heir Francis Russell, but reserving her and her husband's right to reside in Bedford House.Marion O'Connor, 'Godly Patronage', Johanna Harris & Elizabeth Scott-Baumann, The Intellectual Culture of Puritan Women (Palgrave, 2011), p. 75. She let the house to Francis Manners, 6th Earl of Rutland in 1623.HMC Rutland, vol. 4 (London, 1905), p. 526. In the 1620s, Bedford House was let to the Earl and Countess of Rutland.Manolo Guerci. London's Golden Mile: The Great Houses of the Strand (Yale, 2021), p. 110.
In 1628, Francis Russell, now 4th Earl of Bedford, ordered a statue of an old woman holding a cat as a garden ornament, and new chimney pieces for the house.Manolo Guerci. London's Golden Mile: The Great Houses of the Strand (Yale, 2021), p. 111. In 1641 he kept a gilded barge with bargemen dressed in his livery on the Thames at nearby Rayner's Yard.Gladys Scott Thomson, Life In A Noble Household 1641-1700 (London, 1950), p. 56. The Earl was declared a delinquent in October 1643 and his furniture and tapestries were confiscated from Bedford House.Gladys Scott Thomson, Life In A Noble Household 1641-1700 (London, 1950), pp. 70-71.
External links Plan of Bedford House around the year 1690, MAPCO Rijksmuseum, Bernard Lens, Fireworks in Covent Garden
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