Сомерсет Хаус: Тарихы мен архитектурасы

Building on the Strand, London
the 18th century town house of the Duke of Somerset

Somerset House is a large Neoclassical complex situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The Georgian era quadrangle was built on the site of a Tudor palace ("Old Somerset House") originally belonging to the Duke of Somerset. The present Somerset House was designed by Sir William Chambers, begun in 1776, and was further extended with Victorian era outer wings to the east and west in 1831 and 1856 respectively. The site of Somerset House stood directly on the River Thames until the Victoria Embankment parkway was built in the late 1860s. The great Georgian era structure was built to be a grand public building housing various government and public benefit society offices. Its present tenants are a mixture of various organisations, generally centred around the arts and education.

In the 16th century, the Strand, the north bank of the Thames between the City of London and the Palace of Westminster, was a favoured site for the mansions of bishops and aristocrats, who could commute from their own landing stages upriver to the court or downriver to the City and beyond. In 1539, Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford (died 1552), obtained a grant of land at "Chester Place, outside Temple Bar, London" from his brother in law King Henry VIII. Before it was finished, however, the Duke of Somerset was overthrown, attainted by Parliament and in 1552 was executed on Tower Hill. Somerset Place, as the building was referred to, then came into the possession of the Crown. The duke's royal nephew's half sister, the future Queen Elizabeth I, lived there during the reign of her half sister Queen Mary I (1553–58).

On 18 August O. S. (28 August N. S.) 1604, Somerset House was the probable location for the negotiations, known as the Somerset House Conference that culminated in the Treaty of London and concluded the nineteen year Anglo Spanish War. The Conference was the subject of an oil on canvas painting depicting the 11 representatives of the governments of England, Spain and the Spanish Netherlands, seated around a conference table, probably in Old Somerset House. During the 17th century, the house was used as a residence by royal consorts. In the reign of King James I, the building was the London residence of his wife, Anne of Denmark, and was renamed Denmark House. She commissioned a number of expensive additions and improvements, some to designs by Inigo Jones. In 1609 Simon Basil and William Goodrowse made steps and terraces in the garden. Anne of Denmark built an orangery and employed a French gardener and hydraulic engineer Salomon de Caus. He built a fountain known as Mount Parnassus with a grotto carved with sea shells and a black marble female figure representing the River Thames. The fountain was topped by a statue of Pegasus. A surviving cistern for the fountain in nearby Strand Lane was misidentified as a Roman bath. The refurbished palace was the setting for elaborate entertainments at the wedding of Anne's lady in waiting Jean Drummond on 3 February 1614, including a masque Hymen's Triumph written by Samuel Daniel. On 22 May 1614, Christian IV of Denmark paid a surprise visit to his sister. In 1619, King James granted the palace to Prince Charles. Frances Coke, Viscountess Purbeck was appointed keeper of Denmark House, and Mary Villiers, Countess of Buckingham frequently stayed there. After the death of King James in April 1625, his body was brought from Theobalds to lie in state at Denmark House. The state rooms were hung with black cloth. At this period there was no chapel at Denmark House, and so the Great hall was adapted, and the body moved there before the funeral at Westminster Abbey. Between 1630 and 1635 Inigo Jones built a chapel where Henrietta Maria of France, the wife of King Charles I, could exercise her Roman Catholic religion. Royal occupation of Somerset House was interrupted by the Civil War, and in 1649 Parliament tried to sell it. They failed to find a buyer, although a sale of the contents (most notably 1,570 paintings owned by Charles I) realised the very considerable sum (for that time) of £118,000. Use was still found for it however. Part of it served as an army headquarters, with General Fairfax (the Parliamentarians' commander in chief) being given official quarters there; lodgings were also provided for certain other Parliamentarian notables. It was in Somerset House that Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell's body lay in state after his death in 1658. Two years later, with the Restoration, Queen Henrietta Maria returned and in 1661 began a considerable programme of rebuilding, the main feature of which was a magnificent new river front, again to the design of the late Inigo Jones, who had died at Somerset House in 1652. However she returned to France in 1665 before it was finished. It was then used as an occasional residence by Catherine of Braganza, wife of King Charles II. During her time it received a certain notoriety as being, in the popular mind, a hot bed of Catholic conspiracy. Titus Oates made full use of this prejudice in the fabricated details of the Popish Plot and it was alleged that Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, whose murder was one of the great mysteries of the age, had been killed in Somerset House before his body had been smuggled out and thrown into a ditch below Primrose Hill. Somerset House was refurbished by Sir Christopher Wren in 1685. Somerset House was still technically a royal palace and therefore Crown property, with most work being done by the King's Master Mason, John Deval. By an earlier Act of Parliament, it had been placed in trust for the use of Queen Charlotte in the event that her husband King George III predeceased her. Therefore, the 1775 act annulled this arrangement and instead provided for another property, Buckingham House, to be vested in trust for the Queen on the same terms. (Provision was made for the King, who had privately purchased Buckingham House some years earlier, to be duly compensated). In due course, the King outlived the Queen and the property (later known as Buckingham Palace) reverted "to the use of His Majesty, his heirs and successors". By virtue of the same act, Ely House in Holborn (which had itself been purchased just a few years earlier as a potential site for new public offices) was sold and the proceeds applied to the Somerset House project. Initially a certain William Robinson, Secretary to the Board of Works, was commissioned to design and build the new Somerset House, but he died in 1775 shortly after being appointed.

Chambers' own influences stemmed from Palladianism, the principles of which were applied throughout Somerset House, inside and outside, both in its large scale conception and in its small scale details. Meanwhile, work continued on the East and West Wings, which began to be occupied from 1788; It is not certain at what pace the rest of the construction progressed, but it is clear that the outbreak of war with France in 1793 caused delays through lack of money. Chambers died in 1796, whereupon James Wyatt took over as architect. In the end, only the western terrace was built and by 1801 the building was deemed to be complete, at a cost of £462,323.

In addition to applying a rich scheme of architectural decoration, Chambers enhanced the exterior of Somerset House with a multiplicity of sculptures and other visual embellishments. Giovanni Cipriani produced designs and the sculptors executing them included Joseph Wilton, Agostino Carlini, John Bacon, Joseph Nollekens, John Cheere and Giuseppe Ceracchi. many of the ceiling paintings were removed by the Royal Academy when they vacated their premises.

A key reason for rebuilding Somerset House was to provide accommodation for a diverse variety of learned societies, public offices and naval administrators. The Geological Society was also accommodated in the Somerset House from 1828, as was the Royal Astronomical Society from 1834. The annual Royal Academy Exhibition was held in Somerset House from 1780 onwards, until the academy moved out in 1837 (initially to rooms in the new National Gallery, then to Burlington House, Piccadilly). Its former accommodation was given over to a newly established Government School of Design (which was much later to become the Royal College of Art); it remained in the complex from 1837 until, in 1853, the Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths needed to expand its office space and the School relocated to Marlborough House. In 1857, the Royal Society moved out of Somerset House, followed in 1874 by the Society of Antiquaries, the Geological Society and the Royal Astronomical Society; they were all provided with new purpose built accommodation in Burlington House. In addition, the terrace to the west of the quadrangle provided dwelling houses for the Comptroller of the Navy, the Secretary to the Board and three Commissioners of the Navy, along with the chairman, Secretary and two Commissioners of Victualling, As well as providing office space and accommodation, Somerset House was the place where examinations for promotion to the rank of lieutenant took place, sat by several hundred midshipmen each year. Nevertheless, the move was completed by 1873, and the expanding Inland Revenue immediately took over the vacated space in Somerset House.

From the beginning of the new Somerset House there was a fiscal presence in the shape of the Stamp Office and the Tax Office, the former occupying the eastern part of the South Wing from 1789 and the latter occupying part of the East Wing. The Stamp Office had the task of applying an impressed duty stamp to various specific items to show that the required duty had been paid. For example, up until 1855 (when the relevant duty was abolished) every newspaper produced in the country had to be brought to Somerset House to be stamped. The Tax Office administered and collected various taxes, including income tax (first levied in 1799). Introduced as a means of raising revenue in wartime, it was collected during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars; though repealed in 1816, it was reintroduced in peacetime (in 1842) and has been collected ever since. The Inland Revenue was created by a merger of the Stamp and Taxes Office and the Excise Office in 1849; in 1854 the Excise Office staff were moved from their old headquarters in the City of London into the newly built New Wing. Somerset House continued in use by the Inland Revenue throughout the 20th century. In 2005, the Inland Revenue was merged with HM Customs and Excise; its successor HM Revenue & Customs continued to occupy much of the building, although its executive and senior management moved to 100 Parliament Street shortly after the merger. Various divisions and directorates of HMRC continued to occupy the East Wing until 2009, the West Wing until 2011 and the New Wing until March 2013, by which time all staff had been relocated (with most moving across the street to the southwest wing of Bush House). This brought to an end a 224 year association of the revenue services with Somerset House. Phillips retired as principal chemist in 1874. James Bell was then the principal chemist of Somerset House Laboratory until his retirement in 1894. He was replaced as principal chemist by Sir Thomas Edward Thorpe. At the same time, the laboratory was amalgamated with a similar facility that had been established within HM Customs and it was renamed the Government Laboratory. In 1897, Thorpe moved the Government Laboratory from Somerset House to a new building of his own design.

In 1837, following the establishment of civil registration in the United Kingdom, the Registrar General of Births, Marriages and Deaths set up his office in the North Wing of Somerset House, establishing a connection that lasted for over 130 years. This office held all birth, marriage and death certificates in England and Wales until 1970, when the Registry and its associated archives were moved to nearby St Catherine's House at Aldwych. From 1859 until 1998, the Principal Registry of the Court of Probate (latterly the Principal Probate Registry of the Family Division) was based in Somerset House, prior to its move to First Avenue House, High Holborn.

In addition to the learned societies, the ground floor rooms of the North Wing housed the Hawkers and Pedlars Office (on the west side) and the Hackney Coach Office, the Lottery Office, the Privy Seal and Signet Offices (on the east side). The Hackney Coach commissioners had been established on a permanent footing in 1694, while the Board of Commissioners of Hawkers, Pedlars and Petty Chapmen dated from 1698; the latter was abolished in 1810 and its work taken over by the Hackney Coach Office until its abolition in 1831, whereupon responsibility for licensing both of hackney carriages and of travelling traders passed to the Stamp Office. The Lottery Office, established in 1779, was also abolished in 1831 and its residual business likewise passed to the Stamp Office. The Signet Office was abolished in 1851 and the Privy Seal Office in 1884. One of the first occupants of the building had been the Duchy of Cornwall Office. It was accommodated in the East Wing along with the Tax Office and various Exchequer offices (including the Pipe Office, the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer's Office and the Office of the Clerk of the Estreats). As early as 1795 the Exchequer was requesting that more space be made available; Sir John Soane was engaged to redesign their offices, and as part of the scheme the Duchy was relocated to another part of the East Wing, prompting complaints from its officers. Pipe rolls and other ancient records of the Treasury and Exchequer (which had been moved to Somerset House from the Palace of Westminster in 1793) remained stored in the basements until the establishment of the Public Record Office in 1838. The office of Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer ceased to exist in 1833 and the Pipe Office was abolished in 1834; however space in Somerset House continued to be at a premium: in 1854 an Act of Parliament was passed (the Duchy of Cornwall Office Act 1854) noting that the Duchy's rooms in Somerset House were now needed "for the use of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, whose present office is insufficient for the Business thereof, and adjoins the said Office of the Duchy of Cornwall". The Act provided for the Duchy Office to move to new, purpose built premises in Pimlico: now known as 10 Buckingham Gate, the building still serves as head office for the Duchy. From 1785 the Commissioners for Auditing Public Accounts were also housed in the East Wing, The Surveyor of Crown Lands also had his office here until the early 19th century. The Salt Office initially occupied rooms in the West Wing, alongside the naval offices, but it was abolished in 1798 (administration of the salt tax having been transferred to the Board of Excise). and the Tithe Commissioners (1836–51), who also acted as the Copyhold Commissioners. the architect was Sir Robert Smirke. 150 years later this part of the building is still known as the "New Wing". In 1891 a headquarters building was constructed in the West Court (between the West Wing and the New Wing) for the Civil Service Rifles, a Rifle Volunteer Corps.

By the start of the First World War the Civil Service Rifles, by then renamed the 15th (Prince of Wales' Own Civil Service Rifles) Battalion, The London Regiment, had its own Morris tube firing range (where the calibre of the rifle is reduced for indoor operation by a use of a tube) fitted with vanishing and running targets at Somerset House. Somerset House had its share of trials and tribulations during the London blitz in the Second World War. Apart from comparatively minor blast effects at various times, sixteen rooms and the handsome rotunda staircase (the Nelson Stair) were completely destroyed in the South Wing, and a further 27 damaged in the West Wing by a direct hit in October 1940. Still more windows were shattered and balustrades toppled, but the worst was over by the end of May 1941. It was not until the 1950s that this damage to the South Wing was repaired. The work required skilled masons, whose services were hard to come by in the early post war years. Sir Albert Richardson was appointed architect for the reconstruction. He skillfully recreated the Nelson Room and rebuilt the Nelson Stair. The work was completed in 1952 at a cost of (then) £84,000. to maintain the building and develop it as a centre for arts and culture. In the late 20th century the building began to be reinvigorated as a centre for the visual arts. The first institution to move in (in 1989) was the Courtauld Institute of Art, including the Courtauld Gallery, which has an important collection of old master and impressionist paintings. The Courtauld occupies the North Wing.

The main courtyard, which had been used as a Civil Service car park, and the main terrace overlooking the Thames were refurbished and opened to the public, these alterations being overseen by the conservation architects Donald Insall & Associates. Grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund financed the conversion of the South Wing between 1999 and 2003: a visitor centre featuring audio visual displays on the history of the building, the gilded state barge of the Lord Mayor of the City of London and a shop and café were opened, overlooking the river. The Gilbert Collection of decorative arts, and the Hermitage Rooms, which staged exhibitions of items loaned from the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, moved into the same area. The last Hermitage exhibition took place in 2007 and the Gilbert Collection galleries closed in 2008; the collection moved into new galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum in June 2009. Somerset House now puts on a programme of art exhibitions, drawing on various sources. In stages from 2009 to 2013, HM Revenue and Customs withdrew from the other parts of the building; since March 2013 the Somerset House Trust has had oversight of the entire complex. Its management policy has been to rent out the upper floors at a commercial rate to "creative businesses", while devoting the ground floor to "public realm" activities. The trust receives no public subsidy and relies on income from rent and private hire to fund the upkeep of the estate and relies on ticket sales, merchandising and sponsorship to fund its artistic and cultural programme. At other times, 55 vertical jets of water rise to random heights from an array of fountains. The courtyard is also used as a concert venue. In July each year the "Summer series" of music events takes place, which has included performances from artists such as Lily Allen. Somerset House now has more than a hundred tenants, comprising a large and diverse collection of creative organisations and artists including Dance Umbrella, 7Wonder, Outset Contemporary Art Fund, Hofesh Shechter Company and the Royal Society of Literature. The largest tenant is King's College London, whose Cultural Institute, Executive Centre and Dickson Poon School of Law occupy the East Wing, which is adjacent to its historic College Building of 1831.

Somerset House is a popular filming location, with its exterior featuring in several big budget Hollywood films. These include two James Bond films, GoldenEye (1995) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and several scenes of the 2003 film Shanghai Knights, starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, were filmed in the courtyard of Somerset House. The courtyard was also used in the 1991 comedy King Ralph. Elements of the 2008 film The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes, were filmed in October 2007. Somerset House was also used as a filming location in several Sherlock Holmes films, including 1970's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and, more recently, Sherlock Holmes (2009), starring Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr., directed by Guy Ritchie. Somerset House was used as the external filming location for Olivia Newton John's Stranger's Touch video, which featured as part of her Olivia Physical video album in 1981. Exterior shots of Somerset House were used in the 1999 Tim Burton horror film Sleepy Hollow, starring Johnny Depp, and the 2006 film Flyboys. Somerset House was a filming location in the 2012 Bollywood film Jab Tak Hai Jaan, which starred Shah Rukh Khan, Katrina Kaif and Anushka Sharma, directed by Yash Chopra. Somerset House Courtyard was also used in the 2008 movie Last Chance Harvey, with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. Scenes were filmed in Somerset House for the Olympus Has Fallen sequel, London Has Fallen (2016). Exterior shots of Somerset House stood in for Himmler's HQ in Berlin in the 1976 film The Eagle Has Landed. The tunnels under Somerset House have also been used in filming Harry Potter, specifically some of scenes depicting 'Diagon Alley'. Somerset House was also the main location for the BBC's New Year Live television show, presented by Natasha Kaplinsky, which celebrated the arrival of the year 2006.