Thom, C; (2015) Robert Adam's first Marylebone house: the story of General Robert Clerk, the Countess of Warwick and their mansion in Mansfield Street. The Georgian Group Journal , XXIII pp. 125-146.

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Abstract

General Robert Clerk, patron in the 1760s of one of Robert Adam’s earliest London town houses, has remained a shadowy figure for Adam scholars, with seemingly little documentary material about his life to draw upon, but this is no longer the case. He was well known in political, literary and military circles and there are now plentiful clues to be found as to his career, his character and his often unusual opinions on all manner of subjects – including architecture. Much of this is brought together here for the first time. As to Clerk’s house, designed expressly for him and his wife-to-be Elizabeth, Countess of Warwick, it has long been recognized that it was not built exactly to Adam’s known plans. Previous studies have provided important new information and fresh insights but none has been able to recreate with certainty the original layout of Clerk House nor explain fully the prolonged, complicated story of its construction and occupation. This essay aims to address these and other aspects of the building’s history and illustrates for the first time a newly discovered first-floor plan of 1775, apparently in the hand of Lady Warwick herself.

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