43, King Street WC2

The building at 43 King Street, Westminster, is a town mansion constructed between 1716 and 1717, and is stylistically attributed to Thomas Archer. It was originally built for Admiral Lord Oxford and has undergone alterations in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with restoration work completed in 1980. The exterior is rendered in stone and brick, with a concealed roof. The building stands three storeys and an attic above a basement, and is seven windows wide, arranged rhythmically as 2:3:2. The ground floor features a reinstated three-bay Corinthian column porch, set in an antis, flanked by two segmental arched recessed sash windows in each bay. The facade is articulated by four rusticated piers supporting Composite fluted pilasters which separate three groups of segmental arched, keystoned flanking windows and central elliptical arched ones. Impost strings are visible, and the capitals of a giant order are surmounted by dosserets, with the main cornice breaking forward over them. The attic storey includes a cornice with 19th-century iron vases flanking a raised central section of the parapet. A doorway, designed in an elaborate segmental pedimented and rusticated Mannerist style, was added between 1877 and 1880 on the return to the Piazza arcade.

The interior has been considerably altered, but the first-floor level of the stair compartment remains as a Board Room, retaining original woodwork and fine, elaborately moulded plasterwork panels, featuring figured roundels suspended from beribboned garlands, and a coved frieze extending to an elaborately framed oval plasterwork ceiling. A finely carved profiled term chimneypiece can be found in the west front room, alongside original door furniture, dadoes, and other features in the rear first-floor rooms. The original staircase was re-erected at South Walsham Hall, Norfolk.