36, Hertford Street

This is a large townhouse dating from around 1765, with alterations made around 1823. It is a three-bay building on Hertford Street, extending six bays into Seymour Place, and has three main floors plus an attic and basement. The exterior is brick faced with stucco, with channelled detailing on the ground floor. There are blind window openings in the first two bays of Stanhope Row and in the middle bay of the top floor. All windows have been replaced. The building features cast iron balconies, area railings and a cast iron boot scraper set into a patterned marble step.

The interior has a plan consisting of an entrance hall with a simple cornice leading to a central staircase compartment that rises through all floors, lit by large, round-headed windows. The stone staircase has original wrought iron balustrades in an 'S' scroll pattern to the first floor, and simpler stick balusters above. A moulded, ramped wooden handrail runs along the staircase. The stairwell is lined with fine plaster roundels and ovals depicting scenes from Classical mythology, framed by festoons, which may have been the work of Francis Engleheart, a plasterer known to have worked on other houses in Hertford Street. The principal rooms are located on the front and side of the staircase; less original interior fabric is found at the rear of the house. Attic rooms are plain, with simple cornices. Rooms on the second floor also have simple cornices. A main south-facing room and an adjacent west-facing room on the first floor have a deeply carved modillion cornice and carved door surrounds. The ground floor rooms have simpler cornices, and one has a fine Rococco marble fire surround, although its authenticity is uncertain. The front ground floor room features an elaborate plaster cornice below the ceiling cove and a 17th-century-style door surround; these are likely 19th or 20th-century additions. The basement area has been refurbished, with surviving vaults beneath the basement steps.

The house was the residence of Edward Bulwer Lytton, the writer, from 1829-33 and 1839-40. His son, the future Viscount Lytton, who later served as Viceroy of India, was born here in 1831.