Before he was presented with 10 Downing Street as the United Kingdom's first Prime Minister in the present sense, he held the office for the record length of twenty-one years from 1721, Sir Robert (1676-1745), later Earl of Orford, made himself a home here. In this he followed, to some degree, the example of the awful Lord Ranelagh in being Paymaster of the Royal Hospital Chelsea and housing himself on adjacent land. Walpole however made use of an existing house rather than having a new one built and he did pay for the land he used. However he also found the location convenient for the addition of: an octagonal summer house down by the river, to the designs of Sir John Vanbrugh (1644-1726); an orangery, attached to a larger one built to the designs of Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723); and significant enhancements to the house. One of the major persons Walpole entertained here was the consort of George II (1683-1760), Caroline of Ansbach (1683-1737). After 1729 she was Regent during her husbands considerable time spent in Hanover. They each held the other in high regard. The last part of his house to survive included a large ground floor room incorporated by Sir John Soane (1753-1837) into the Royal Hospital Infirmary built here behind what is now the Military Museum. A visitor in 1880 wrote of the room, which was then Ward 7 of the Infirmary, that it had ' a splendid white marble mantelpiece and Greek mouldings on the transverse beams of the ceiling' And he added 'Everything speaks of former grandeur, and rightly, for this was the drawing room of a mansion of great renown, in which the great Sir Robert Walpole received his guests.' The Infirmary was bombed in the Second World War. The Vanbrugh summer house was razed when the Chelsea Embankment was built.

O/S Co-ords:2795.7792
Source(s):

Chambers Biographical Dictionary

Chelsea