Carlton House  - The Headquarters of Rediffusion Ltd.  1945 - 1990
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History
Associations with the name and form of Carlton House are richer still and the latter can be traced to Grecian times.
Sketching in outline the early history of the area it has to be admitted that certain aspects were unsavoury. In the time of the Stuarts
the district generally became an amusement centre for the well-to-do. Bowling greens, taverns and gaming houses appeared and prospered.
On the site occupied by Carlton House was held a market, St. James' Market, described by a contemporary writer as "a large place with a commodious market house in the midst filled with butchers' shambles; besides the stalls in the market place for county butchers, higglers and the like, being a market grown to great account and much resorted unto as being served with good provisions ".
When Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, obtained a building lease of land to the west, which he subsequently developed into St. James'
Fields (now St. James' Square) as the domicile of nobility and royalty, an annual fair which had hitherto been held on the land was displaced to the market. The fair had fluctuating fortunes. Fairs in the seventeenth century had the reputation of being the haunts for every form of vice and villainy and St. James' Fair, which lasted for fifteen days, was regarded as the worst by far. It was suppressed several times but was successively revived until its final suppression in about 1670.

From the commercial and vicious the site transcended to the sublimity of a place of worship. The circumstances which brought about this change are linked with the original Carlton House
Sometime after 1669 the latter was built by Lord Carleton on the site where the Duke of York's Monument now stands (this is the monument, rather similar to the Nelson Column, seen at the end of Lower Regent Street (when viewed from Piccadilly Circus).
In 1730 the house was purchased by Frederick, Prince of Wales, the father of George Ill. Later it passed to another Prince of Wales who became the Prince Regent and, subsequently, King George IV.
While in residence at Carlton House he projected a great avenue to stretch to his county mansion, situated on land to the north that came to be known as "The Regent's Park ".
The project was put into effect and brought about the creation of Regent Street and the disappearance of much of the congested property in the neighbourhood. Constructional work on Lower Regent Street was commenced in 1817 and on the site of the present Carlton House arose St. Philip's Chapel also sometimes known as Waterloo Church. The church was designed by Repton and was completed in 1820 at a cost of  £45,000.

Here enters the first association with Grecian history, for the centrally placed tower of the church was a replica of the little circular Athenian temple known as "the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates ", or "The Lantern of Demosthenes " and dating back to. the year 335 B.C. "Choragic" means" pertaining to the leader of a choir or the person appointed to organise the chorus"  hence the tower had significance in the musical sense.
The original Carlton House was pulled down in 1827, as being of low structure compared with surrounding buildings, it was dwarfed by the vista of Westminster in the rear.
The name of Carlton is perpetuated in the titles of several thoroughfares in the neighbourhood and that of Carlton House was revived when the existing building was erected in place of St. Philip's Chapel in the year 1904. An association with the past was retained, however, in that the apexes of the twin domes, which surmount the extremities of the facade, were ornamented with miniature replicas of the Choragic Monument and presumably further urns were added to give increased Grecian colouring.
Thus history turned full cycle and a tribute to the art of music, conceived in the fourth century before Christ, was to have an echo in the embellishments that grace the premises of a company concerned with providing musical reproduction for the many.

© rediffusion.info 2010
REDIFFUSION LIMITED
Carlton House,  Lower Regent Street
London SW1Y 4LS  
Tel. 01-930-0221
The original Rediffusion headquarters occupied spacious and modern accommodation in the massive pile of Bush House, the well-known block of offices which occupies much of the island site bounded by Aldwych and The Strand.
When the drums of war sounded and the expansion of the Air Ministry, from adjacent Adastral House, brought about compulsory requisitioning of most of Bush House
a temporary refuge for the offices was found at Victoria Station House.
Happily this building escaped the encroachment of war from the skies but with the intrusion of the flying bomb, which could disregard the cloak of night and render the waking hours as perilous and exhausting as the vigil of darkness, evacuation of all but a few of the staff to a place of safety became highly desirable. And so hastily converted quarters in Nottingham became the temporary home of Rediffusion's activities. After a stay of some three months, all too short for many who had come to appreciate the comparative safety and the hospitality of the Midlands, the advance of the Allied armies relieved the terror of London and permitted a return to Victoria Station House. These premises, however, were occupied only on a short lease and during June 1945 the various departments moved into the new accommodation of Carlton House, which the Company had acquired.
The dignified and symmetrical facade of Carlton House, a picture of which is featured right, was so well known to many.
Although much property in the neighbourhood had been mutilated by the efforts of the enemy, the vacinity of Lower Regent Street is seeped in older history which extends back to the time of the early Stuarts
Carlton House 1980

Carlton House 1980

St. Philip's Chapel

St. Philip's Chapel

Carlton House 1945

Carlton House 1945

Carlton House 2010

Carlton House 2010