1. 1776, Present Somerset House begun by William Chambers
2. C16th Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector of Edward VI, pulls down the old inn of Chancery on the site to build a palatial residence
3. Seymour pulls down St Paul’s cloisters; the Church of The Nativity of Our Lady and The Innocent, Strand; St Ursula, Bishop Llandaff’s house, and Bishop of Chester’s house, to obtain building materials for Somerset House. “Stout hearted” workmen defend St Margaret’s Church against plundering carpenters and masons
4. Capuchin priests followed by ‘Oratorians’ reside here and use Inigo Jones’ chapel
5. 1660, The Duke of Gloucester dies here of small pox
6. 1661, The palace is re-named ‘Denmark House’ on Shrove Tuesday in honour of James 1St Queen Anne of Denmark
7. 1763, The Venetian ambassador is the last important visitor before the palace is demolished
8. 1638, A small cemetery for Catholic members of Anne of Denmark’s household is established
9. Samuel Pepys attends Ash Wednesday mass in 1663
10. ‘King Ralph’
11. 1725, James Stuart ‘the pretender’ was rumoured to have been ‘secreted’ here
12. 1776, The principal rivers of England adorn the keystones of the arches on the Strand
13. ‘Justice, Truth, Valour, and Moderation’ crowned with British arms on top ledge, supported by figure of ‘fame and genius of England’
14. A white watch face let into the wall of the office of Stamps and Taxes is said to have belonged to a falling workman, who had been saved by its ribbon catching on a piece of ornament
15. The vaults are used for public records
16. Site of a Saxon rubbish tip in ‘Ludenwic’
17. The ‘Roman Baths’ were once part of a taller structure which fed the fountains
18. ‘Upon Her Majesties new buildings at Somerset House’ is a poem by Edmund Waller
19. The ghost of Admiral Lord Nelson haunts the courtyard of the former Navy Board HQ
20. Films shot at Somerset House include ‘The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes’
21. ‘Maigret’
22. ‘Portrait of a Lady’
23. ‘Wilde’
24. ‘Sleepy Hollow’
25. ‘The Gathering Storm’
26. ‘Goldeneye’
27. Shopfronts on the Strand as depicted in the late C19th ‘Tallis’ guide
28. Random individuals with a connection to Somerset House replace Kings College alumni portraits
29. Nelson’s stairs are decorated with flowers on the upper floors but left bare further down where the ‘lower orders’ work
30. 1940, Albert Richardson repairs bomb damage to the S. Wing
31. The new ‘Miles’ stairs by Eva Jiřičná
32. Somerset House is currently home to many artists, organisations, and businesses, whose logos appear on the costumes of ice skaters and in shop windows
33. The Royal Academy had its original home at Somerset House; famously, The Summer Exhibition crowds on the staircase were comically depicted by Rowlandson in his 1811 print ‘The Starecase’
34. Catherine of Braganza was the last queen to live at Somerset House 1685 –1692, where she became embroiled in the fictitious Popish Plot
35. 1781, a Royal Society member finds a new planet and names it ‘Georgium Sidus’ (later, Uranus)
36. Paintings form The Courtauld collection come to life
37. Samuel Courtauld, Elizabeth his wife, their dog, and their strange limousine
38. General Fairfax, Commander of the Parliamentary Army, re-names Somerset House ‘Tudor Palace’ and confiscates royal treasures, auctioned here in ‘The Great Sale’
39. Inigo Jones dies at Somerset House
40. Cromwell’s ‘effigy’ lies in state at Somerset House for several weeks
41. 1659, Henrietta Maria stops the £10,000 sale of Somerset House after restoration, setting up stables, coach house, and ‘presence chamber’ there
42. Under Charles 1st Catholic Queen, Somerset House is described as ‘a mere outpost of the Swiss Guard’
43. A letter from ‘Titus’ in Middlesex Journal 1778 describes Adelphi Terrace as ‘abomnible’ and looking like ‘gingerbread’
44. 1776, The New Somerset House is the first public building project executed in full view of the press
45. The courtyard is used for many ‘maskarados’ such as ‘odiferous parcels from the East’, Johnson’s ‘Oriana’, and works by Donne, Dekk, Shakespeare, Heywood, Campion, Chapman and Draytc
46. Somerset House is the former home of…
The Hawkers + Pedlar’s office
The Lottery office
The Hackney Coach office
The Salt Tax office
The Pipe office
The offices of The Auditor of Imprests
The King’s Bargemaster
+ the residential population
47. 1539, Strand is paved under an act of Parliament
48. Elizabeth 1st coach rumbles across the courtyard rarely, but she remained at court for Christmas festivities
49. Queen Elizabeth I departs Somerset House on the state barge for a ‘fete champetre’ at Richmond Palace under a canopy of green silk with branches of eglantine and golden blossoms
50. 1554, Phillibert of Savoy visit the Queen at Somerset House
51. Cornelius de la Noye, alchemist ‘wrought in Somerset House’, is sent to the Tower for distilling a draught of perennial youth
52. A special ‘masque’ is performed for the 1614 marriage of Lord Roxborough and Jane, daughter of Patrick, Lord Drummond
53. A ‘quarrell twix Earl of Essey and young Hegden’ sees the latter go to fetch his sword
54. The King remarks to the Infanta and Spanish prince that ‘we are building a temple to the devil’
55. Jawaharlal Nehru, co-founder of the meeting place of ‘The India League’ at the India Club restaurant is greeted by the proprietors, Yadgar Marker and his daughter Phiroza. The building is being ‘flipped’ into a luxury hotel by its ‘vengeful’, ‘unsentimental’, and rapaciously shitty’ owners
56. Samuel Courtauld bequeaths his art collection to the Institute. His fortune in the family textile business aided his interest in art after he saw The Hugh Lane collection. He was one of the first British collectors to acquire French Impressionist works
57. Having closed the Strand to motor traffic, the area outside Somerset House became a de-facto ‘skatepark’
58. Queen Elizabeth I conducts court business at Somerset House
59. King James I and Duke of Buckingham’s tennis game at Somerset House with many wagers is followed by a ball
60. Somerset House is the H.Q of the ‘Makerversity’, a cutting edge prototyping facility
61. Beached whales on the Thames foreshore attract naturalists, opportunists, and general gawkers
62. Climate change protestors close Waterloo Bridge with a ‘topless demonstration’
63. Unable to land their boats at Walbrook or Savoy, shored up for Roman craft, Vikings found their capital upstream at the beaches of Westminster
64. Fiona Banner and David Kohn’s ‘A Room for London’, a rooftop boat modelled on Conrad’s ‘Nelly’
65. ‘The Folly’, floating coffeehouse moored off Somerset House was a ‘lounge for rich gay wits and gallants’, which ‘took to evil course after loose and disorderly ladies were admitted ’
66. King’s College / Strand underground station are haunted by a ‘floating lady’, possibly a Victorian suicide
67. Until 1855, when it was abolished, every newspaper in the country had to be brought to Somerset House to be stamped, raising revenue during the Napoleonic Wars
68. Somerset House ‘Laboratory’ tested food, beer, spirits, and tobacco under the Inland Revenue
69. Somerset House is currently home to the London Original Print Fair
70. The courtyard is used by the Inland Revenue as a car park
71. Lunch time on the Strand, and students of King’s College ‘wodge up’ the pavements
72. At the time of the making of this drawing, Somerset House was hosting an exhibition concerning the phenomenon of ‘CUTE’
73. The ABC, Aerated Bread Company’s cafes opened all over Britain in the mid C19th, affording women a more attractive social space than seedy inns, and recommended by the congress of the 1899 ‘International Council of Women’. There were 150 ABC branch shops in 1923, leading George Orwell to complain about the ‘relentless industrialisation’ and ‘sinister strands’ in English catering
74. Enayball, created at Somerset House’s Makerversity, allows wheelchair users to create large scale drawings
75. A civil war era trained band approach Somerset House
76. Somerset House’s newly commissioned flags
77. The Arms of the Duke of Somerset
78. Stephen Balkenhol’s bobbing man sculpture in the Thames prompted a rescue attempt
79. Print connoisseurs at the London Original Print Fair
80. Models at The Royal Naval Museum
81. Jeffrey Hudson, the court dwarf of Henrietta Maria, poses on top of a model of Somerset House
82. Another ‘Somerset House’ is built by the crew of ‘The Victory’ in 1832, after the ship becomes trapped in ice looking for the N.W. passage
83. Charlie brown, famous ice-skater, and subject of exhibition at Somerset House
84. The replica ‘Western Flag’ of Spindletop Oil Field recreated at Somerset House by artist John Gerrard in 2017
85. A perforating machine
86. Shobana Jeyasingh dance at Somerset House
