Stable Yard Gate Lodge

Gatekeeper's Lodge known as Birdman's Lodge, designed in 1838 by Robert Smirke of the Office of Works, wrapping around a 1720s water house that originally served St James's Palace. The building was altered in 1899 and again in 1985. It is constructed of stock brick with Portland stone dressings and red brick.

The lodge is single-storey and rectangular in plan. A reservoir formerly occupied approximately 30 per cent of the floor space in the south-east corner. Smirke's original 1838 design provided an entrance, sitting room, bedroom, bed enclosure for a servant, and wash house with an external area containing a water closet and coal store. In 1899, the reservoir was floored over to create two bedrooms accessed from a passage, the kitchen replaced the wash house, and a bed enclosure was installed in the entrance lobby. In the later twentieth century this became a bathroom.

The west and south elevations each comprise three bays articulated by brick pilaster strips. The building has a deep moulded cornice and blocking course concealing a flat roof. Windows and doors feature moulded stone architraves, with the entrance door set beneath a probably inter-war canopy. The entrance door comprises six glazed lights over near-flush panels. To its right is a similar architraved blind entrance. A triple window contains 4-over-4 sashes, those to the north dating to the mid-nineteenth century, the remainder replaced. The Mall elevation displays two paired 4-over-4 sashes and a single sash to the left, all in moulded stone architraves. A pair of internal reduced brick stacks sits on the roof.

The 1838 rooms retain square-cut skirtings, windows in moulded architraves over panelled boxes, four-panel doors in moulded architraves, and twentieth-century coved cornices. The 1899 spaces have four-panel doors in moulded architraves with moulded skirtings and cornices. The brick footings of the reservoir survive beneath the floor of the later bedrooms.

The site originally held a water house or reservoir serving St James's Palace, supplied by the Chelsea Waterworks Company established in 1723. The water house was a red brick building with pyramidal roof and cupola, presumably housing a lead-lined cistern. It appears in J. Kip's views of St James's Palace and Park from the 1720s and on Henry Flitcroft's 1729 plan of St James's Palace. The brick footings of the reservoir remain under the lodge; the extent of survival above ground, encased in later brickwork, is not known.

In July 1838 Robert Smirke, as architect attached to the Office of Works, drew up proposals for a new gatekeeper's lodge to be built around and over the reservoir. The building conforms with these proposals and slightly later drawings. In 1899 the Office of Works produced plans to expand internal space by removing the reservoir and building two bedrooms over the footings, whilst opening up Smirke's blind windows in the elevation overlooking the Mall and modernising the kitchen. In 1985 the kitchen was altered, extending into the small open-air area and demolishing the water closet and larder. The history of the reservoir, lodge, and works undertaken on them are well-documented.