The Royal Overseas League, Including Rutland House And Its Former Gatehouse, Number 16 Arlington Street, And Vernon House To The South

The Royal Overseas League

Club building formed from two adjoining town mansions and a gatehouse, substantially altered and extended in the twentieth century.

Rutland House was designed by James Gibbs and built in 1735–6 as the home of the Duchess of Norfolk (died 1754). It takes its current name from John, the Fifth Duke of Rutland, who came into ownership in 1816. The house was sold to the Royal Overseas League in 1934 by the Eighth Duchess of Rutland following the death of the Eighth Duke.

The only exterior wall of Rutland House now visible to the public faces Queen's Walk towards Green Park and was the original rear elevation. It is appropriately plain, constructed from red brick with a slate roof and featuring a four-window range across three storeys over a high basement, with a fourth storey added later. The windows are flat-arched with gauged brick lintels and have been rebuilt as sashes to an authentic eighteenth-century design. Stone bands separate the storeys, and the first floor is decorated with a cast-iron balustrade set on shaped stone brackets.

The original east-facing principal facade of Rutland House is now obscured by a tawny brick extension added in 1937. This extension links the mansion to the former gatehouse, dated to the 1730s and situated at number 16 Arlington Street. The gatehouse, which faces Arlington Street, is constructed of brown brick with a slate mansard roof. It presents a two-window range to the left and a large rusticated carriageway arch to the right, fitted with original panelled wooden double doors and original-design hinges. The sashes are of original design. A stone entablature runs below the parapet, and a stone storey band marks the first floor. The concept of entering a city mansion through a separate gatehouse was unusual at the time and set a precedent; several other buildings in Arlington Street subsequently adopted this feature.

The interior of Rutland House retains most of its original character on the ground and first floors. Outstanding features include a grand stone staircase with one of the earliest wrought-iron balustrades in the country, topped by a glazed domed lantern and screened on the ground floor by an Ionic colonnade. Several chimney pieces survive from the early to mid-eighteenth century. The most significant is the large marble fireplace in the Rutland Room, designed by the sculptor John Rysbrack (1694–1770). At the rear of the main stair is an unusual "Crinoline stair", whose balusters are bowed outward to accommodate women wearing hoop dresses.

Vernon House adjoins Rutland House to the east. It occupies the site of a late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century house of the same name, so called after the family who owned it from approximately 1700 to the early nineteenth century. The present structure was substantially rebuilt in 1835 and again extensively rebuilt following a fire in 1902. Early nineteenth-century brick can still be glimpsed on the top floor above the Portland stone facing to Queen's Walk; the courtyard elevation to Park Place shows a mixture of early nineteenth-century construction with later brick and Portland stone.

The Park Place elevation of Vernon House displays two bays with a three-window range. To the left, a pair of windows is grouped within quoin strips. The right-hand range features a Palladian window set in a rusticated aedicule with a bowed porch to the centre opening. The ground floor is ashlared and rusticated, with an entrance set beneath an Ionic aedicule and a pair of round-arched windows to the right. Unless otherwise noted, all openings are flat-arched with architraves. A parapet band marks the first-floor windows, and a cartouche is positioned between the first and second floors. The top floor has a modillioned cornice, and the slate mansard roof is punctuated by three dormers. A stack rises from the south wall.

The elevation facing Green Park is faced in Portland stone up to the second floor, with original brick above. It displays a two-window range; the right-hand window is treated as a three-storey segmental bay with tripartite windows. A first-floor balcony on stone brackets is enclosed by cast-iron railings of original design. Cast-iron railings also protect a French door on the first floor of the bay. A cast-iron balcony and stair connect the ground floor to the garden level. Swags decorate the ground-floor entablature band, and chamfered rustication marks the basement.

The interior of Vernon House contains an open well stair to the main entrance with a wood balustrade and panelling. A lobbied entrance to the right features moulded panels and cornice. Steps rise at the party wall with Rutland House.

The rooms in the bay on the south were originally oval in plan. The east end of this space is now occupied by a lift shaft, but the west end retains original fireplaces and mouldings. Particularly noteworthy is the first-floor director's office, which features wall panelling in Rococo Revival style and a polished marble chimneypiece. The ground-floor Brabourne Room, or Buttery, features an Ionic screen at its east end and displays finely moulded cornice, walls, and chimney piece. The Mountbatten and Willingdon Drawing Rooms on the first floor are decorated in Regency Revival style.

Vernon House was purchased by the Royal Overseas League from Lady Hillingdon in 1921. The listing also includes the stone gate piers, wood double doors, attached railings and light fixtures to the courtyard accessed from Park Place.

The 1937 extension to the east links Rutland House and the gatehouse, providing new principal fronts where the original facades once stood.