Cambridge House

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The position of Cambridge House is marked on this extract from a map of London published in 1799.

Cambridge House is a mansion on the northern side of Piccadilly (Number 94) in central London, England. It was built for Charles Wyndham, 2nd Earl of Egremont, who appointed Matthew Brettingham as his architect in 1756. It was initially known as Egremont House, and was completed, or nearly so, by 1761. The house is in a late Palladian style. It has three main storeys plus basement and attics and is seven bays wide. As is usual in a London mansion of the period the first floor (second floor in American English) is the principal floor, containing a circuit of reception rooms. This floor has the highest ceilings and its status is emphasised externally by a Venetian window in the centre.

The house changed hands several times. For several years in the 1820s it was occupied by George Cholmondeley, 1st Marquess of Cholmondeley and known as Cholmondeley House. From 1829 to 1850 it was the London residence of Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge. Due to his royal status it is the name the house acquired at this time, Cambridge House, which has persisted. However its most famous owner was Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for most of the decade from 1855 to 1865, who purchased it after the Duke of Cambridge's death. After Palmerston's death at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire in 1865 his body was taken to Cambridge House from where his funeral procession departed to Westminster Abbey.

Shortly after Palmerston's death Cambridge House was purchased by the Naval & Military Club, which had outgrown its previous premises. The club came to be known as the "In and Out" on account of the prominent signs on the building's entrance and exit gates. The club retained ownership until 1996, when the property was sold to the entrepreneur Simon Halabi for £50 million pounds sterling ^[1]