These sections comprise the research material generated by the restoration works at 68 Dean Street. These are my personal notes and all characters and organisations are actual and not fictitious, from frogs to English Heritage.
The paint research was carried out by removing thumbnail pieces of paint back to the wooden panelling then blowing it up many times to show all the paint, undercoat and varnish layers from 1732. Panelling in houses was always painted: before about 1710 by expensive wood graining. The timber used was almost always pitched pine because it retains its resins and was readily available; however it has a rather unattractive grain. From around 1710 the fashion was light stone with dark wood colour for the skirtings and shutters, as can be seen clearly on the illustrations here. Light stone would have been about 6d a yard whilst darker colours up to 3s6d a yard, and given the expense and limitations of candle and other forms of lighting, the light stone colours were practical and relatively cheap.
Finding two unknown rooms in the rear attic at 68 generated the attic survey: their use remains a mystery, though a complete servants quarter has been found in one of the Meard Street houses. The thinking has always been that servants lived in the kitchen and not in the attic until later in the 18th century, but clearly this may not have been the case. The entire attic has a peculiar high skirting consisting of window shutters; the attic is divided with one third being a tiny plastered room and other not plastered. The dividing wall is made up of bits of panelling with a door between only 4' high, still with the original lock.
These rooms were found because my structural engineer insisted on removing the third floor, post second world war ceilings, to find out if the two roofs needed re-triangulating, i.e. if the rafter triangles needed to have their nails re-fixed so they became firm again There was evidence that the top of the flank wall was being pushed outwards.
The stripping out team became very excited when they found floorboards above the rear attic ceiling as this indicated a room above the third floor. The top landing has a ladder leading to a fire exit via the attic through a trap-door: but when you lift the trapdoor you cannot see the attic, as there is a plaster wall around the fire exit. We made a small hole in this wall and could see a tiny plastered room with a strange wall and a tiny door in it.
When I faxed James Edgar my Case Officer at English I got a rather frosty response. I had asked for permission to install rooms in both attics and had been refused on the grounds that no such arrangements existed in early 18th century houses. Mr. Edgar told me I was taking the mickey, however common-sense prevailed and he agreed to visit with the Conservation Officer from Westminster and other colleagues. He agreed that we could demolish the plaster wall hiding the attics, which we did, and this revealed a small plastered room covered in dust and cobwebs and with a plastered ceiling.
The front attic still has the (working) internal wooden and lead lined gutter which takes the rain-water from both pitched roofs from the centre valley gutter to the front of the house. It exits via the house next door (67 Dean Street), and 68 takes the rainwater from No. 1 Meard Street, as all the rainwater arrangements in Meard's small estate are inter-linked
Astonishingly less is known about water and waste management arrangements in the early 1700's than in Roman London and there are no detailed contemporary records explaining how this crucial aspect of the town house operated. During works in the rear basement vault, after the York stones were lifted, my builders son John Turnbull Jnr. disappeared up to his waist into a large hole thus discovering the cesspit for 'upstairs'. John Meard Jnr.'s privy in the back yard was connected to this via a vertical, and angled brick shute. As the archaeologists from UCL were a bit wimpish and wouldn't excavate it, I got a tetanus injection and sitting on a low chair dug my way down weekend by weekend, and some of the artefacts discovered are displayed here.
The cesspits were discontinued around 1862 (see below) when the Victorian drains were installed, and before then they were also used a form of rubbish shute. They were cleared out periodically by the Night Soil Man whose helper was lowered down to removed the cess (permitted only between 12 midnight and 5am), and the contents were sold to local farms. The same happens today with Thames Water.
The most interesting finds were: a complete make-up set with one pot still containing the make up (probably dating from 1862 as just outside the cesspit); and a large number of long cylindrical bottles. I found the remains of very many of these bottles at the bottom of the cesspit. The head perfumier at Guerlain has provided the best, most interesting and credible explanation, contradicting the archaeologists who claimed they were perfume bottles. His explanation is that each bottle represents our taking a bath or a shower: that they are spirit bottles with a small perfume base and were used to rub down with, and then discarded down the privy. Given the limited water supply and our assumptions as to cleanliness, this interpretation may well mean that inhabitants of London town houses were a bit less smelly than we imagine!
If true this is a rather important component of town house and other well off living in the early 1700's, but I am still awaiting an analysis of the preserved bottles by English Heritage such is the interest in early 18c life.
Dan Cruickshank always told me that there must have been a servant's cesspit since they would not have been allowed to use the Meard family privy in the back yard. Although 68 is not Gosford Park, there would have been a rigorous upstairs - downstairs division. Their cesspit was discovered when I was cleaning out the front left vault and noticed that part of the brick floor was missing. This led to a second archaeological investigation, this time by the Museum of London Archaeology Unit, where we uncovered a form of cesspit-soakaway, complete with a hibernating frog in the middle of it.
Frogs do need clear sun-lit water to breed, and therefore the discovery of this (and then a second frog) in the middle of the West End was a bit of a conundrum. Even assuming they had hopped into the cesspit via the old 18c. sewers where had they come from? I rang Froglife (the UK of course has a Society for Everything), only to be told the following: frogs can travel up to 2 miles each night; the nearest spawning ground are the ponds at Buckingham Palace and in St James's Park; therefore the frogs had travelled (or jumped) from the Palace, down the Mall, across Trafalgar Square, up Lower Regent Street, taken a short cut up Whitfield Street, etc etc, and then jumped down into my basement. When the man from Froglife arrived to collect them it was agreed that this scenarios was a bit unlikely so this is another mystery.
The house has two front vaults, which we had assumed were both for coal, but in fact this one was the servant's cesspit vault, with a coalhole shute added as a later addition. The original hole up, which is just in front of the pavement, was designed to take water from the street back down to the cesspit-soakaway. Nothing much was found in this cesspit except an ale bottle from the early 1700's buried at the bottom. Both cesspits end at the water table, and if one digs below the level of their walls the holes fill up with water.
The basement still retains the 1732 York stone passage floor from front to back. This had to be lifted to lay new drains and we found a culvert which appears to have pre-dated the original 1681 house, together with a smaller culvert at right angles into the basement front room kitchen leading to the original sink. Records from Westminster City Council appear to indicate that that the main culvert may have been part of the illegal drainage system laid by the early 18c. Soho developer Frith, and which led into the drainage system at Monmouth Street in Seven Dials where I used to live!
David Bieda
February 28th 2002