A Rare Invite To The Beautiful Lancaster House

I was delighted recently to be invited by the Foreign Office to be given a tour of a Government building that is almost never open to the public: Lancaster House.

It can be found next to St James’s Palace and it is approached by going through a barrier manned by armed guards. 

Built initially as a grand royal residence, today it is used for high-profile diplomatic events, meetings and hosting. As you look through the photos below it may possibly start to look quite familiar. It features regularly in TV shows and films, often in place of Buckingham Palace. Lancaster House has been in The Crown, Downton Abbey, the King’s Speech, Bridgerton, the Young Victoria and much more. 

The Grand Old Duke

Lancaster House was built from 1825, commissioned by Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, second son of George III.

He had already owned a property on the site, but wanted something rather more grand. He was the brother of George IV and would have become king if he had not died before George IV. Instead the throne passed to his younger brother William IV. 

He was Commander in Chief of the British Army and is remembered in the nursery rhyme, The Grand Old Duke of York. You can see a statue of him around the corner in St James’s, atop a very tall column.

He died in 1827 heavily in debt, so it is said the column is so tall because he is trying to escape his creditors. The Prince’s grand new home, originally called York House, also lay unfinished at the time of his death.

A Hub For London’s High Society 

The incomplete house was acquired in 1829 by the Marquess of Stafford, later 1st Duke of Sutherland. He finished and expanded it, partly to house his art collection and it subsequently became known as Stafford House.

The initial shell of the building was designed by Benjamin Dean Wyatt. Robert Smirke and Charles Barry were commissioned by the Marquess to complete the stunning interiors. It was initially a two storey, two bedroom house, but the second Duke had to add another floor because he ended up having eleven children. 

The total cost came to £72,000 and it was apparently the most valuable private house in London at the time. 

It has a comparatively simple Bath stone, neo-classical exterior, as seen above. The interiors however are sumptuous and opulent, designed in a largely French, Louis XIV, Versailles-esque style. The Stafford family were very much in the upper echelons of London’s high society and hosted many lavish entertainments here. It therefore became nicknamed the ‘ballroom of London’. 

The glowing colour of the walls are the work of Charles Barry who used ‘scagliola’ (a coloured paste containing mineral fragments) to give the impression of marble.

Looking up is important you walk around Lancaster House, with some spectacular ceilings.

In 1911 the fourth Duke of Sutherland sold the lease to the soap magnate William Lever, Lord Leverhulme. Lever co-founded the Lever Brothers firm, which today is part of the mega company Unilever. It was subsequently named Lancaster House after his home county of Lancashire. I have written previously about the Hampstead Pergola, which was built for Lord Leverhulme.

A Generous Gift To The Nation 

Lord Leverhulme then gifted Lancaster House to the nation in 1913. From 1914 it became home to the London Museum and remained that way right up until World War Two.

The Museum moved to part of Kensington Palace and from 1945 Lancaster House has been used by the Government for important and high-profile diplomatic events, receptions, summits and more. As part of this function it is also home to the Government’s wine collection, which consists of around 29,000 bottles.

It has been witness to two G7 summits, one in 1984 hosted by Margaret Thatcher with Ronald Reagan, Mitterand, Kohl, Trudeau etc in attendance and another in 1991, hosted by John Major.

The ‘Most Magnificent Room In London’

Below is the stunning ‘Long Gallery’. It was originally designed as the ‘Picture Gallery’ and, in true Versailles style, runs the full length of the East front of the house. It was described at the time as the ‘most magnificent room in London’.

This impressive space has seen many important diplomatic events over the decades, including lots of the meetings that led to the formation of NATO in 1950 and discussions after the Suez crisis in 1956, as well as meetings leading to the independence of various nations including Zimbabwe in 1980 following the Lancaster House agreement of 1979, but also Kenya, Nigeria, Malaya and Cyprus. Winston Churchill also gave a coronation banquet for the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II here in June 1953. 

For more recent history, it is where Theresa May gave the ‘Lancaster House Speech’ on the 17th January 2017 outlining her plans for leaving the EU. This included leaving the Customs Union and Single Market. It was also, interestingly, where Keir Starmer hosted the UK-EU summit in May 2025 and announced his ‘reset’ of relations. 

Another more recent bit of history was the hosting at Lancaster House, in March 2025, of the London Summit on Ukraine.

The Music Room

The Music Room is another splendid space, named after the grand musical events that the Sutherlands would have hosted. It was in here, for example, that Frederic Chopin played for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1848. 

This is also where, in 1954, the Nine Power Conference was held which integrated West Germany into Western defence agreements and, in theory, made the duration of the NATO agreement indefinite. 

The State Drawing Room 

The State Drawing Room has hosted many a dignitary over the centuries. This room and a few of the other rooms were used for the final scene of The King’s Speech film starring Colin Firth (2010). One of the windows here, via the magic of cinema, became the doorway onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace. You can watch that scene featuring Lancaster House here.

A detail I also liked were these original bell pulls, for calling servants. They hark back to a time when this was an aristocratic home and would have served by a large team of servants.

The State Dining Room

The State Dining Room was once the Sutherlands’ drawing room and it has wonderful views over St James’s Park and the Mall.

The Green Room

Another of the smaller rooms includes the Green Room. This was once the boudoir for the second Duchess of Sutherland.

Paintings Of A Queen

Lancaster House is also home to the largest single portion of the Government’s art collection. 

There were a few portraits, for example, of Queen Victoria throughout her reign. Below is a portrait of the young Victoria, mounted on a horse.

The painting dates from 1846 and was by Count D’Orsay. D’Orsay apparently felt like there was no ‘creditable resemblance of Her Majesty’ and boasted that he could paint a better likeness from memory than any previous portrait produced from sittings. The Earl of Cardigan wagered the artist a thousand guineas that he could not do it. The artist did however have the advantage of having a box at the St James’s Theatre, that was directly that of the Queen’s. He would study her features during theatre performances and then each following morning recreate her features in the painting. 

The painting below is another of Queen Victoria, from 1899, by Sir William Quiller-Orchardson, much later on in life.

It shows the Queen in 1897, just a few years before she died, being presented a bunch of flowers by her great grandchild, the future Edward VIII. It therefore depicts all four generations of the Royal family and heirs to the throne at the time. In the back is the future King Edward VII, her son, and ushering the child forward is future George V, her grandchild.

A Virtual Tour

So there we have it, a glimpse behind the doors of a very hardworking Government building and seasoned star of the screen.

Whilst researching this post I found that you can do a virtual 360 degree tour of the building on the Government website here.

Thank you as ever for reading, more of London’s incredible historical treasures below…