Grand Connaught Rooms

The Grand Connaught Rooms comprise the former Freemasons' Tavern, including part of the façade of the Freemasons' Hall that was demolished in 1927. The building was constructed in 1863-64 to designs by Frederick Pepys Cockerell, retaining structural elements from the earlier Freemasons' Tavern of 1774. Figure sculpture was executed by William Grinsell Nicholl. The building was enlarged and remodelled between 1905 and 1910 as the Connaught Rooms, a suite of dining, meeting and entertainment rooms, under the direction of Alexander Brown and Ernest Barrow, with detailed design by Crickmay & Sons. A further extension was added in 1933-36 to the design of HV Ashley and Winton Newman. The extension to the east, formerly Nos. 64 and 65, built 1956-57, is not of special interest.

Exterior

The 1863-64 façade of the former Freemasons' Tavern at Nos. 62-63 is built of brick with Portland stone dressings, now painted. It comprises two main storeys plus basement and attic storey, arranged in five bays. The end bays are recessed, with an entrance to the west and a window to the east, each surmounted by a swan-neck pediment and balustraded balconet. The three central ground-floor windows were altered in 1905-10 to form the main entrance to the Connaught Rooms. At first-floor level, the central windows have stone architraves, with the central window pedimented. Second-floor bays are pilastered, each with an oval oeil-de-boeuf above the window. The parapet has piers to each bay and a cast-iron balustrade. An entrance canopy was added in 1933 and has been much altered since.

To the west stands the surviving three-bay section of Cockerell's Portland stone Freemasons' Hall façade at No. 61, plus a small section of the central pedimented bay. It rises two storeys above a basement, with a main attic storey and mansard attic above. The ground and first floors are framed by rusticated pilasters with Composite capitals. The first floor has French windows with cast-iron balconets, the bays separated by Composite columns in antis. Above the windows runs a carved frieze featuring three faces, one between each column, representing the sun, moon and stars. Above the dentilled cornice, the attic storey has three windows behind a balustrade, framed by niches containing female statues representing Wisdom and Fidelity. A deep bracketed cornice supports a scrolled parapet; to the right, a section of the pediment survives. Cast-iron area railings with ball finials stand before the building.

The rear elevation comprises, from east to west, a post-war extension to the Great Hall annexe (not of special interest); the rear of the Great Hall in red brick with Portland stone dressings featuring a blocked Serlian window; and the rear of the 1933 extension faced in red brick with stone dressings.

Interior

The layout is complex, but room alignment essentially conforms to the former plots of Nos. 61-63, and is described accordingly.

Nos. 62-63, behind the 1863-64 Tavern façade, comprise a large entrance hall and stair running from ground to first floor, the Drawing Room at first floor, the Crown and Coronet Rooms at second floor, and the Grand Hall at the rear accessed at first-floor level via a lobby. The entrance hall and stair are executed in an opulent Edwardian Baroque manner with elaborate plaster enrichment. The floor is laid in black-and-white chequered marble, and paired columns stand on the left, or east, side. The imperial stair has a heavy marble balustrade with vase balusters. The first-floor landing has an elaborate coved ceiling, with swagged decoration above fielded panels on the west wall and windows, now converted to doors, on the east wall. At the north end, a doorway with an enriched architrave leads through to the Drawing Room, which dates from 1863-64 and was embellished in 1905-10 when it was combined with an ante-room on the south side. It has an enriched coffered ceiling with a central square compartment carried on four columns. To the south of the landing, an arch flanked by paired columns leads to a lobby giving access to the Grand Hall. No interior views of Cockerell's original hall are known to exist, but embellishments were clearly made in 1905-10 when it was extended. The hall consists of ten pilastered bays, originally six, with an elaborate cornice and barrel-vaulted ceiling with roundels inset with cast-iron decorative ventilation grilles. A large Serlian window at the south end is now blocked. A balcony at the north end, added in 1905-10, has a bronze balustrade; above is a small upper gallery beneath a segmental swagged pediment supported on caryatids. The east wall was removed when the annexe was created; this area is decorated in a similar manner, while the west wall had doors inserted in each bay. The Crown Room at second floor is mainly by Cockerell and has an elaborate deep coved ceiling with lattice plasterwork and a lantern dome, carried on paired Corinthian columns and pilasters; a door with an elaborate architrave leads through to the Coronet Room at the rear, which also has an enriched coved ceiling.

No. 61 incorporates the remodelled 1788 Tavern behind the retained portion of Cockerell's Freemasons' Hall façade. Elements of the 18th-century plan and structure survive, comprising a front room, a square-plan open-well stair, known as the west stair, behind it with a small room to the east, and a larger room to the rear alongside a lightwell. At ground floor, a segmental barrel-vaulted lobby of 1905-10 leads from the entrance hall to the Lounge Bar, which has a dentilled cornice, again Edwardian in style. To the rear is the Champagne Bar, created in 1963 in a neo-Edwardian style, timber panelled with alcoves. The west stair has a moulded inner string. Doorways leading off the stair at first and second-floor levels have panelled linings, bolection-moulded architraves and splayed plinth blocks, probably dating from 1788. A lift shaft has been inserted into the well, and the balustrade removed. Rooms at upper levels were refurbished in 1933-36 and later. The Ampthill Room at third floor, remodelled in 1905-10, has a barrel-vaulted ceiling with enriched plaster ribs.

The 1933-36 five-storey block to the rear of No. 61 has at ground floor a cloakroom with some original fittings. Above is a series of large and small rooms with interconnecting corridors and lobbies, accessed at first floor via a lobby aligned with the Grand Hall lobby. The large open-well stair in cast stone has a geometrical-pattern bronze balustrade; the landings interconnect on the west side with the Freemasons' Hall. Many rooms and lobby areas retain original fittings and decorative features incorporating Masonic symbols, including coffered ceilings, plasterwork with stylised classical and Art Deco motifs, steel-frame windows with stained glass, secondary stairs, doors and architraves, and a few mirrors. Doors to several rooms have raised rhomboid and diamond panels, and handles or knobs decorated with six-pointed stars; there is a large uplighter on the landing with brass candelabra. The Balmoral and Devon Rooms are panelled, the latter with decorative inlay. The Ulster Room is decorated in an Egyptian Art Deco manner.

Post-war additions, including the extension to the Grand Hall annexe, are not of special interest. Not all rooms were inspected.

History

The evolution of the Grand Connaught Rooms is complex, dating from 1774 when the street's association with freemasonry began. Regularly organised freemasonry in England is considered to have begun on 24 June 1717 when four lodges met at the Goose and Gridiron alehouse in St Paul's Churchyard, Covent Garden, to found the Grand Lodge of England, the world's first grand masonic lodge. This was an itinerant body meeting at inns, taverns and livery halls, but by 1768 there were almost 400 masonic lodges nationally, all of whose masters were eligible to attend Grand Lodge of England meetings, and funds were raised to build a new hall. In 1774, the Grand Lodge of England acquired No. 61 Great Queen Street, a five-bay house of 1637, to the rear of which had been added a second dwelling. The Grand Lodge of England occupied the rear building whilst the front house was leased to Luke Reilly, who opened it as the Freemasons' Tavern. The Tavern was an important asset to the Grand Lodge of England both as a source of income and for the servicing of masonic meetings. In 1775-76 the Grand Lodge of England built a hall on the land at the rear of No. 61, to the design of Thomas Sandby, Grand Architect to the Grand Lodge of England. Believed to be the first purpose-built masonic hall in England, it was entered at first-floor level and had an elaborate deep coved ceiling embellished with Masonic symbols, lit by clerestorey windows. The hall was rented out for non-masonic events such as concerts and fundraising dinners. The Anti-Slavery Society was founded there in 1807, and in 1839 Daniel O'Connell addressed a meeting in support of Catholic Emancipation.

In 1787 the Grand Lodge of England acquired Reilly's lease and rebuilt the Tavern in 1788-89, to the design of William Tyler. This four-storey building housed the Freemasons' Tavern on the ground floor and masonic rooms above. In 1790, the Grand Lodge of England purchased the lease of No. 62, the adjacent house to the east, as an annexe. The Grand Lodge of England merged with its rival, the Antient Grand Lodge, founded in 1751, as the United Grand Lodge of England in 1813, the year in which Sir John Soane became a freemason and Grand Superintendent of Works to the United Grand Lodge of England. Soane was duly engaged to design a second hall, exclusively for masonic use, which was built on the rear gardens of the adjacent houses to the east, Nos. 62-63, whose freeholds were acquired in 1815 by John Cuff, then leaseholder of the Tavern. Cuff sold the freeholds to the United Grand Lodge of England in 1838. Soane's hall, named the Temple, was one of his most complex and refined late interiors, lit by clerestorey windows with a central pendant dome. It was enlarged by Philip Hardwick in 1838, but was apparently never held in great regard. The Tavern was a popular meeting place: in 1807 the Geological Society was founded there, and in 1863 the Football Association of England. In 1867 a banquet was held there in honour of Charles Dickens prior to his departure on a reading tour of the USA.

Between 1848 and 1858 the United Grand Lodge of England acquired Nos. 59-60 to the west and Nos. 64-65 to the east. The latter were leased separately as a hotel and from 1899 to 1939 to the Grand Lodge of the Mark Master Masons. In 1864-65 a new Tavern and Freemasons' Hall were built on the site of Nos. 59-63, retaining Sandby's hall, to the design of FP Cockerell (1833-78), son of the architect CR Cockerell. The Tavern and United Grand Lodge of England premises were henceforth separated functionally, whilst interlinked, and visually by the design of their façades. The Freemasons' Hall to the west, corresponding with the plots of Nos. 59-61, had an imposing classical façade of three storeys and nine bays, with statues in niches symbolising the four Masonic virtues: Wisdom, Fidelity, Charity and Unity, by William Grinsell Nicholl (1796-1871). The Tavern façade to the east, corresponding with the plots of Nos. 62-63, was designed in a more reticent classical manner. Behind these two discrete façades however the demarcation lines were less clear since No. 61, behind the eastern portion of the Freemasons' Hall façade, remained part of the Tavern, hence the survival of this part of the building. This arrangement arose from Cockerell's desire to give the hall a longer street elevation than the Tavern. Moreover, a substantial part of the 18th-century fabric of No. 61 was retained behind the new façade, and still survives in altered form.

By the mid-19th century, the catering sector was becoming increasingly commercialised: dining halls, restaurants and refreshment rooms, often connected to hotels and railway stations, proliferated, whilst continental chefs introduced more elaborate cuisine. The Tavern improvements were clearly aimed at exploiting this niche in the market, and in 1864 a new company was formed to run the Tavern, which in the 1870s employed the former royal chef Francatelli as manager. The Tavern had a morning room and dining rooms; at first floor a domed and columned vestibule and grand stair, leading through to the Great Hall, which was placed to the east of Sandby's hall. The latter, on the demise of Soane's building, was renamed the Temple. The Freemasons' Hall comprised a series of offices, a grand stair, and lodge and ante rooms, plus Sandby's Temple at the rear of the Tavern. In 1880 the United Grand Lodge of England acquired Nos. 57-58, which were rebuilt in 1899 as a library and museum, replicating Cockerell's Tavern façade.

The next major phase was from 1905 to 1910, following the expiry of the Tavern's lease and acquisition of property in Wild Court and Middle Court to the rear. Architects Alexander Brown, Grand Superintendent of Works to the United Grand Lodge of England, and Ernest Barrow were appointed to extend and remodel the Tavern, to be named thereafter the 'Connaught Rooms' in honour of the Grand Master, the Duke of Connaught. The detailed design however appears to have been by Crickmay & Sons. A large entrance hall was created and the grand stair rebuilt. The Great Hall was lengthened and given an annexe on the east side, behind Nos. 64-65; it now seated 800 and was hailed as the largest of its kind in London. The building offered a suite of newly refurbished rooms for hire for social and corporate events, and a grill room, buffet, American bar and smoking room at basement level.

In 1915, Nos. 55-56, the last surviving 17th-century house in Great Queen Street, was demolished to make way for an extension to the Freemasons' Hall, but this plan was superseded by a scheme for a new building to commemorate the freemasons killed in World War I. Cockerell's Freemasons' Hall was demolished, with the exception of the east portion of the façade, and the new Masonic Hall was completed in 1933 to the design of Ashley & Newman. The Connaught Rooms were further aggrandised in 1933-36 when Sandby's Temple was deemed unstable and demolished to make way for a five-storey extension, designed by Ashley & Newman. The last phase of expansion was in 1956-57 when Nos. 64-65 were rebuilt to the design of Ashley & Newman.

The Grand Connaught Rooms are the successor of the original Freemasons' Tavern, the site of Britain's first Grand Lodge, and numerous historic events took place there including the founding of the Anti-Slavery Society and the Football Association.