17, Hill Street W1

This is a grand terraced town house located on Hill Street, built between 1748 and 1749 by Benjamin Timbrell, with significant alterations and interior work undertaken by Robert Adam between 1777 and 1779 for Sir Abraham Hume, 2nd Baronet. The building is constructed of brown brick with a slate roof, and it rises four storeys high with a basement and dormered mansard. It has a four-window front.

The entrance porch on the left is a later addition dating from around 1906, designed in the Adam style with stone facing, a lower cornice over the doorhead, a frieze featuring putti panels and roundels, and slender Ionic columns framing the arched doorway with fanlight. The ground floor windows are semicircular arched, with gauged flat arches over the upper floor windows, all featuring recessed glazing bar sashes. A plat band is visible on the first floor, and bracketed cornices are positioned above the second floor and as a crowning detail. Bowed wrought iron balconettes were added to the first floor around 1906. Wrought iron area railings are also present.

The interior retains a near-complete Adam scheme, though with some neo-Adam alterations carried out by Hindley and Wilkinson in 1906. Adam created a rear wing to provide two large reception rooms on the ground and first floors, replanned the staircase (the stairs themselves dating from 1906), and provided designs for the ceilings of the three main first-floor rooms and the staircase. Surviving examples include the rear room, the grand room in the wing, and the staircase ceiling. Drawings also exist for painted door panels in the main drawing room, and the ground floor grand room in the wing features Tuscan column screens. The wall decoration primarily consists of painted arabesques and grotesque figures on shallow pilasters, friezes designed "al'antico". The front ground floor room retains original features from Timbrell’s design, such as the cornice and chimney piece. Adam was working for Hume at Hill Street concurrently with his decoration of Wormleybury country house. Hindley and Wilkinson are likely responsible for the ceiling in the first floor front room, as well as remodelling the hall alongside the staircase. A collection of approximately 50 drawings relating to 17 Hill Street are held at the Soane Museum.