Carlisle House, Soho

This Carlisle House was on the west side of Soho Square, at the end of Carlisle Street. It was probably built between May 1685 and June 1687 by speculative builders, but is often incorrectly attributed to Christopher Wren in the 1660s for the Earls of Carlisle. It was a three-storey house of brown brick with stone band-courses separating the storeys and a triangular pediment ornamented with egg-and-dart moulding below and leaf moulding above. The railings in front were probably a later addition, and fine plasterwork had been added in about 1740 to the staircase and one of the rooms on the first floor. In 1860 it became a Home for Clerical, Medical and Law Students, managed by a Mrs. Whittaker, later known as Whittaker's Private Hotel. In 1873 it became an antique furniture warehouse. From 1899 onwards, a different antiques dealer leased it and redecorated much of the interior. The house was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid on 10–11 May 1941, a full-moon night, killing the caretaker and his wife and the local air-raid warden, who had been having tea together. The site of the house was occupied by offices at numbers 10–12 Carlisle Street, built in 1959–60, On the site of the garden and later of the riding academy is Film House, the former headquarters of British Pathé. ==Carlisle House, Soho Square==

The other Carlisle House was a large mansion on the east side of Soho Square, at the south corner of Sutton Street, with rear buildings on Sutton Street and in Hog Lane, now Charing Cross Road. This was the main house on the square. The first definitely known occupant of this house, in 1685, was Edward Howard, second Earl of Carlisle. to Teresa (or Theresa) Cornelys, an entertainer and courtesan born in either Vienna who had used her married name, Pompeati, in her previous stay in London as an opera singer, and now called herself Madame Cornelys from the first name of her Rotterdam lover, Cornelis de Rigerboos. and beginning in 1771, also put on unlicensed operatic performances, for which she was fined. The house itself was replaced by 1794 with two new houses facing the square; the southern one survives, but the northern was demolished in 1891 when St. Patrick's church was built. ==References==