The London Pantheon

Barrie Sheppard takes us on a stroll in Georgian London. Barrie writes: If you have had the pleasure of strolling down Oxford Street, London, you may recall passing a Marks and Spencer store at number 173 on the southern side. Had you taken that same walk in the late 1770s you would have passed the London Pantheon, an impressive edifice built in Roman classical style designed by the young up-and-coming architect James Wyatt. Though not impressive in the manner of its narrow address to Oxford Street, despite its portico, the frontage widened behind and extended 62 metres to the rear providing ample space for a grand building. The entrance on Oxford Street opened into a vestibule with doors that led to card rooms, and beyond them to galleries, a grand staircase and finally a large assembly rotunda topped with a huge dome reminiscent of the Pantheon in Rome.

The Pantheon was built as winter assembly rooms for the London elite – a pleasure palace to rival, or perhaps supplement, the Vauxhall Gardens across the Thames, and Ranelagh in Chelsea. On its opening night, 22 January, 1772, to ensure propriety, constables with staves (“bouncers”, if you like) controlled the entrance to prevent persons of low character from entering, persons such actors, actresses and women of “slight” character generally.

However, the constables were no match for a large group of young blades who had decided that Sophia Baddeley, a London actress and notorious courtesan, would not be denied. When confronted by the constables, they raised their swords to form an arch for her to process under and enter in triumph to the brilliantly lit rotunda.

Following this success, others who would also have been excluded on character grounds, made successful entrances, so much so that within a few days an advertisement appeared in the morning newspapers announcing that ladies would no longer be required to show their marriage certificates to gain entry, on the grounds that it was not always convenient for them to carry them on their persons. Apparently a marriage certificate was sufficient to show sexual propriety. Men, of course, were not required to prove similar appropriateness.

Sir Joshua Reynolds attended the opening night. He must have been impressed because he returned four nights later to attend a masked ball dressed in a long black robe with the top half of his face covered – presumably he was not there to engage in the kind of sexual shenanigans that maskers got up to at such balls – shenanigans Mathew Martin described for us in his lecture on the NGV’s porcelain figures a few years ago.  Perhaps Sir Joshua was there to tout for commissions, though being partially incognito would have been a hindrance.

Edward Gibbon, of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire fame, and friend of Reynolds, thought the Pantheon, “in point of ennui and magnificence, the wonder of the eighteenth century and of the British Empire” – a none-too veiled judgement suggesting that the British Empire was on a downward path similar to that of the Roman Empire – “in point of ennui”!

Horace Walpole thought the building was ‘the finest in all of England, even Europe!’

Samuel Johnson and his friend and later biographer, James Boswell, attended on a later occasion to check it out. On approaching the building, Boswell thought it ‘not as impressive as the Ranelagh Rotunda’, though, as Johnson pointed out, the Ranelagh building was placed in a garden setting and could be seen on approach as a whole on. The Pantheon could not.

Once inside, Boswell commented that: “there is not a half a guinea’s worth (the price of admission)  of pleasure in seeing this place.”

Johnson disagreed, replying, sardonically, that: “there is half a guinea’s worth of inferiority to other people in not having seen it” – a fair price for the schadenfreude!

Boswell then followed up with: “I doubt, Sir, there are many happy people here”.

To which Johnson replied: “Yes, Sir, there are many happy people here. There are many happy people who are watching hundreds, and are thinking hundreds are watching them”.

People soon tired of the Pantheon’s entertainments, attendance flagged, and it was subsequently used as an opera theatre. However, new regulations governing theatres closed it as an entertainment centre in1814. In 1835 it was drastically renovated to house a bazaar. Then in 1867 it became the headquarters and showroom of the wine merchant W. A. Gilby, until 1937 when it was demolished to make way for the present Marks and Spencer store, built in Art Deco style.