Devonshire House - Ethos

Ethos

During the 18th century, existing forms of entertainment began to change and large sophisticated receptions came into fashion, often taking the form of concerts and balls. Initially, hosts would hire one of many new assembly rooms built to indulge the fashion. However, it was not long before the more frequent and wealthy hosts began to add a ballroom to their town houses and the more wealthy still to forsake their smaller town houses in favour of a new and vast palace designed purely for entertaining. The Duke of Devonshire, an owner of vast estates, belonged to the latter category. Thus the fire of the Devonshire House in 1733 provided the opportunity to build a house at the height of contemporary fashion.

For his architect, the 3rd Duke chose the fashionable architect William Kent, for whom this was a first commission for a London house. The house was constructed between 1734 and about 1740. Kent was the protegee of the immensely cultivated 3rd Earl of Burlington and had worked at Chiswick House, built by the 3rd Earl in 1729, and also at Devonshire House's near contemporary Holkham Hall, completed circa 1741, both in the Palladian style; these houses were at the time considered the epitome of fashion and sophistication. Chiswick House was later to come, other estates, into the Devonshires' possession through the marriage of the 4th Duke to Lady Charlotte Boyle, daughter of Lord Burlington.