Number 7 (Including Former Number 6)

No. 7 (Including former No. 6), Old Palace Yard, South Westminster

This pair of town houses was built around 1754–6 as residences and offices for the Clerks of the Parliaments. The original design was traditionally attributed to John Vardy, though it has since been identified with an elevation in a folio of drawings associated with Isaac Ware and other Office of Works architects. The building underwent significant alterations in 1793–4, now attributed to Sir John Soane.

The front elevation is Portland stone, with the left side rendered and brown brick to the other elevations, featuring patches of stock brick. The roof is slate with rendered chimneystacks. The design follows an astylar Palladian style with a unified composition. The building is three storeys tall with a basement and dormered attic, measuring seven windows wide with a three-window pedimented centre break.

The ground floor features paired central doorways, one now converted to a window. All ground floor windows and doors are semicircularly arched and set in similarly arched recesses with an impost band creating a blind arcade effect. The ground floor is rusticated with a plat band above. The first floor (piano nobile) has recessed glazing bar sashes in architrave surrounds; those to the centre break have pediments and blind balusters below the sills. The second floor has square windows. An oculus appears in the pediment. Lead rainwater heads are fitted throughout, and wrought iron area railings with urn finial standards (probably 20th century replacements) complete the exterior. A bracketed cornice and pediment with blocking course finish the roofline.

The interior contains a vaulted vestibule, attributed to Soane, with lions' head masks as corbels, a semi-circular fanlight and double doors. A further vaulted passage behind features paired lions' head masks and a circular plaque with a head of Medusa and acanthus leaves.

The main staircase to the right is a late 18th-century well staircase with two iron balusters to each step and a mahogany handrail. The left-hand staircase is identical except for the flight from first to second floor, which retains the original 1750s staircase with turned balusters and column newel posts.

The basement has a quadripartite vault with tooled impost blocks. The ground floor right room contains mid-18th-century panelling with a dado rail and a marble fireplace with wooden ovolo moulding and blank panel, together with a cornice with ovolo moulding and a six-panelled door. The ground floor rear right room has a late 18th-century marble fireplace with four-leaved square paterae and a similar cornice. The ground floor rear left room features a late 18th-century marble fireplace with a triglyph frieze and a panel with a wreath, two crossed staffs and flowers, a moulded cornice, and a cambered alcove.

On the first floor, the front right room has a late 18th-century marble fireplace with a triglyph frieze, a panel with an urn and oval paterae and wheat ear drops, a mid-18th-century modillion cornice and ovolo moulding. The rear right room has a late 18th-century marble fireplace with oval medallions, leaves and pilasters, mid-18th-century dado panelling and ovolo moulding. A circular vestibule contains a curved late 18th-century six-panelled door and curved end double doors with a fanlight. The front left room has a late 18th-century marble fireplace with a cornice featuring triglyphs and medallions with two figures, and a double door. The rear left room has a late 18th-century stone fireplace with fluted pilasters, a triglyph frieze, and a panel depicting seated Britannia leaning against a lion and greeting a heroic youth laden with baggage, with a three-masted ship in the background, a Cupid to the left leaning against a wheat stack, and a Cupid to the right with a barrel. The cornice features roundels and anthemions, and the door is a six-panelled example with a surround of six-petalled flowers. The second floor contains six plain marble fireplaces.