Decorating Arlington Street

Arlington Street was developed in the late seventeenth century on land belonging to Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, Secretary of State to Charles II and a member of the notorious Cabal ministry. The street's eastern side originally overlooked the open ground of Green Park, a position that guaranteed light, air, and views — amenities that made Arlington Street addresses among the most desirable in Georgian London. The houses attracted the highest echelons of the aristocracy: the Dukes of Grafton, the Earls of Sunderland, and the Pelham family all maintained residences here during the eighteenth century. Sir Robert Walpole, generally considered Britain's first Prime Minister, occupied number 5 (later renumbered) before moving to Downing Street. William Kent, the architect and landscape designer, remodelled number 22 for Henry Pelham in the 1740s, introducing some of the earliest Palladian interiors in a London domestic context. The street suffered during the Blitz, with several houses destroyed or badly damaged, leading to post-war rebuilding that introduced the Caprice restaurant building and other modern interventions. However, several original Georgian houses survive substantially intact, most notably numbers 21 and 22, which together form one of the finest surviving groups of early Georgian domestic architecture in London. The Ritz Hotel, designed by Mewes and Davis and opened in 1906, occupies the block between Arlington Street and Piccadilly, its Beaux-Arts facade in Norwegian granite and Portland stone adding an Edwardian grandeur to the street's northern end. The street remains predominantly residential at upper levels, with discreet commercial uses at ground floor.

The decoration of Arlington Street's Georgian houses requires a nuanced understanding of eighteenth-century decorative practice and the materials science underpinning their conservation. For exposed brickwork, maintenance of original tuck pointing is a specialist skill requiring lime-putty ribbons of precisely controlled consistency, applied using a narrow-wheeled jointer and trimmed to razor-sharp edges. Where the tuck pointing has been lost, careful recording and replication of the original technique is essential; the backing mortar must be a lime-ash mix coloured to match the brick face, over which the white lime-putty tuck is applied. Portland stone elements should be cleaned using poultice techniques, applying a kaolin-and-water paste to draw out embedded soiling without wetting the stone excessively. Decayed stone can be repaired using a lime-aggregate mortar closely matched to the colour and texture of Portland Whitbed, built up in thin layers and finished with a float to replicate the original tooled surface. Timber sash windows demand a linseed oil paint system, with the sashes painted in off-white and the boxes in a contrasting darker tone where historical evidence supports such treatment. The wrought-iron railings and balustrades require particular care: hand preparation using needle guns and wire brushes removes loose rust without destroying the fire-scale, after which a zinc-phosphate primer and alkyd finish in traditional black provide robust protection. Interior lime plasterwork, especially Kent's decorative ceilings, must be decorated with breathable distemper or limewash to maintain the moisture equilibrium essential to the plaster's structural integrity. Gilded elements require periodic conservation using traditional water-gilding with 23.5-carat gold leaf on a red-bole ground.