5-13, Mansfield Street W1

A large terrace of “1st rate” town houses located at 5-13 Mansfield Street, London W1, was built between 1770 and 1775 by Robert and James Adam as a speculative development for the Portland Estate. The buildings are constructed of stock brick with rusticated stucco to the ground floors, using an Adam patent process. The slate roofs are hidden behind parapets. The row presents a unified appearance with well-proportioned, astylar elevations, distinguished by the design of the entrances. No. 15 is a later facsimile rebuild and is listed separately.

The buildings have four storeys and a basement, with the top floor functioning as an attic storey. Each front is three windows wide. The doorways, situated to the right and left of each pair, are notable. Numbers 5, 7, and 13/15 have semicircular arched openings framing a Venetian window-inspired composition: panelled doors are accompanied by side lights flanked by slender Ionic columns and pilaster jambs, with entablatures (some enriched). These doorways feature archivolted inner fanlights and delicately patterned radial glazing to the outer overall fanlight. Numbers 9 and 11 have semicircular arched doorways with panelled doors and side lights flanked by Ionic pilasters and patterned fanlights, the whole framed by attached Ionic columns; friezes are festooned over the doorways and fluted over the sidelights. The upper floors feature recessed sash windows, now with later small-paned glazing bars at No. 13, all under flat, gauged arches. A plat band defines the finish of the stucco work to the first floor and a sill band is present on the first floor (broken by the windows at Nos. 5-11). A main stucco cornice sits over the second floor, with an attic cornice and blocking course above. Balconies of delicate cast iron are present across the first floor of Nos. 5, 7, and 9, while No. 11 has similar window guards. Wrought iron area railings feature arrowheads and urn finials.

The interiors are very fine, including stone geometrical wrought iron balustrades to top-lit staircases, delicate Adam plaster mouldings (likely by Joseph Rose, who was head leaseholder and builder of No. 7), inlaid and statuary marble chimneypieces, and mahogany doors. The garden elevations of the mews buildings, designed to be viewed from the rear of these houses, are associated with Nos. 5-9 Mansfield Mews. No. 13 was the residence of J.L. Pearson and the home and office of Sir Edwin Lutyens. The terrace forms part of an exceptionally unified “1st rate” development alongside Adams’s Nos. 16-22 (even) opposite and Nos. 61 and 63 New Cavendish Street, which together close the north vista.