20, Hanover Square

This is a substantial terraced town house, dating to approximately 1718-20 and originally designed by Nicholas Dubois. It was altered internally and redecorated around 1785, likely by Samuel Wyatt, and around 1890 a porch was added by William Flockhart. Further additions, including a corridor, offices, a sales room, and an auction room at the rear, were constructed around 1910 by E Vincent Harris. The exterior is dark yellow stock brick with a slate mansard roof featuring dormers.

The building is four storeys high, with an attic and basement, and has five windows. A distyle in antis Doric porch, with a balustrade above, is placed asymmetrically. The windows are architraved sashes; those on the first floor have cornices and bracketed sills, those on the second floor have cast iron window guards and bracketed sills, and those on the third floor have cast iron guards with stucco dies and bracketed sills. Stuccoed bands run at first floor level and third floor sill level. A projecting modillion cornice is surmounted by a stone balustrade, and cast iron railings are attached to the areas.

The interior is of high quality, featuring many moulded ceilings and cornices. The hall has an open well and a full-height cantilevered stone staircase with a lead trelliswork banister panels adorned with paterae at the angles and vertical panels of palmettes in mandorlas, as well as a moulded mahogany handrail. A glazed dome is above the stairwell, displaying lunettes depicting fictive drapery and roundels, spandrels with carved eagles and cameo pendants, and a dentil cornice to the landing. A barrel vaulted and coffered corridor is on the ground floor. The front left-hand room on the ground floor features an Ionic screen, a finely moulded ceiling and cornice, a two-colour marble fire surround of Doric columns and entablature with a central carved panel, and doors with enriched raised field panels.

The rear sales room (partially partitioned in the 20th century) is a large, rectangular space with attached Tuscan columns along the long walls. Girders span the room between these columns to support the walls of the auction room above. The Country Houses department’s room features an octagonal opening to a dome with a circular glazed centre. First-floor rooms similarly display moulded ceilings and marble fire surrounds, with the front left-hand room presenting an especially notable white marble surround featuring carved figures of women with garlands of flowers, standing on circular alters decorated with bucrania in shallow relief. The auction room is in the form of a Greek cross with very shallow arms, covered by a flat ceiling. The central square has pendentives and a glazed dome with a triglyph frieze around the inside base, modelled in high relief, incorporating bucrania in metopes. The windowless walls have simple panels articulated by Doric pilasters; the astragal and echinus of the capitals are carried around the room as an architrave, and the entablature is comprised of two fascias.