The Albany

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Albany (the article is not normally used) is a residence in Piccadilly, London, England.

It was built 1770-1774 by Sir William Chambers for Viscount Melbourne, as Melbourne House. It is a three storey mansion seven bays (windows) wide, with a pair of service wings flanking a front courtyard. In 1791 it was exchanged with Frederick, Duke of York for Dover House, Whitehall (now a government office). In 1802 the duke gave up the house and it was converted into 69 bachelor apartments (known as sets). This was achieved by not only subdividing the main block and the two service wings, but also adding two parallel sets of buildings running the whole length of the garden.

Historically Albany was the best known and most prestigious set of bachelor apartments in London. The residents included such famous names as the poet Lord Byron and the future Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, and many members of the aristocracy. Nonetheless occupants have been known to complain that the accommodation is often rather cramped. Residents do not now have to be bachelors. About half of the freehold of Albany is owned by Peterhouse, a small Cambridge College. Albany is governed by a Board of Trustees. Rents are well below commercial levels and sets are allocated on the basis of social connections.

[edit] Selected tenants

The list below is based mainly on the much longer list in the Survey of London, which includes a large number of peers, as well as the more of the varied types of people listed here. Most of them only stayed for a few years. Many but by no means all had their time at Albany when they were quite young.

• Antony Armstrong-Jones, later 1st Earl of Snowdon, photographer
• Sir Squire Bancroft, actor
• George Basevi, architect
• Sybille Bedford, writer, lived in Aldous Huxley's servant room
• Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor
• Isaiah Berlin, philosopher
• Henry Brougham, later Lord Chancellor
• Lord Byron, poet
• George Canning, politician
• George Cattermole, artist
• Alan Clark, historian and politician
• Sir Kenneth Clark, art historian
• William Ewart Gladstone, later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• Graham Greene, writer
• Georgette Heyer, writer
• Henry Holland, architect
• Aldous Huxley, writer
• John Lane, publisher
• Lord Lee of Fareham, politician
• Edward Bulwer Lytton, writer and politician
• Lord John Manners, politician
• John Morgan, writer on etiquette
• Malcolm Muggeridge, journalist and broadcaster
• Sir Harold Nicolson, writer and politician
• J.B. Priestley, writer
• A.J. Raffles, fictional gentleman burglar in the works of E.W. Hornung
• Terence Rattigan, playwright
• Sebastian Shaw, actor
• Sir Robert Smirke, architect
• Terence Stamp, actor
• Lord Stanley, politician, later 15th Earl of Derby
• William Henry Fox Talbot, pioneer of photography
• Herbert Beerbohm Tree, actor-manager

[edit] External links

• Survey of London - detailed history with plans and photographs.
• Page on georgianindex.net - but note that the picture at the top of the page is not Albany. It is the original design for York House in The Mall, a later London residence of Frederick Duke of York, who never settled anywhere for long. It went on to acquire an extra storey and to be renamed Stafford House and then Lancaster House.