Writers, Radicals And Rescuers: A History Of Hazlitt’s Hotel

Soho is one of London’s most eclectic areas packed with art, creativity and history.

It also has some wonderful architectural survivors. Just off the busy Soho Square and down Frith Street you can find a row of three charming Georgian townhouses. Today these make up Hazlitt’s Hotel.

Hazlitt’s has been a favourite of many visitors to Soho over the years, particularly writers, artists and those who work in film and TV. Anthony Bourdain loved it for example, describing it as “like staying at a potty English uncle’s when he is not at home.”

This spot has a fascinating history going back over three centuries, right up until the 1980s when these buildings were saved from being gutted and losing a lot of their historic character.

Soho Emerges  

What is now Soho was still open fields in the mid 17th century. After the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 the area West of Charing Cross slowly started to be developed. 

Soho Square and the area around it was originally called Soho Fields but by the 1670s a recognisable street pattern had started to appear. 

The first known reference to Frith Street is from June 1678, when the developer Richard Frith and William Pym leased land on its western side for building. 

Monmouth House

On the South side of Soho Square was the grand Monmouth House. This had been constructed originally for James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of King Charles II. 

The Duke of Monmouth ended up leading a rebellion against his uncle King James II in 1685. Monmouth was captured and then executed on Tower Hill on 15th July 1685. The execution was unfortunately one of the worst in London’s history. The executioner was a man called Jack Ketch who, unfortunately, botched it. He lost his nerve and struck poorly, ending up requiring multiple swings of the axe. He had to finish the job with a knife to cut through the final tendons.

Monmouth House was acquired by Sir James Bateman, Lord Mayor of the City. His son William pulled down the stables on the East side of Frith Street and replaced them with a new row of houses. It is said that some of the original materials were even used in their construction. 

Monmouth House was eventually demolished in 1773. 

Frith Street 

Our buildings here, 5-7 Frith Street, were constructed in 1718. Thomas Archer, the great 18th century architect who also designed St John’s Smith Square in Westminster, oversaw the plans.

John Strype in 1720 described Frith Street as ‘graced with good buildings well inhabited’. This area was initially intended for the gentry but became rather more diverse, Bohemian and cosmopolitan in character as the wealthier residents fairly swiftly moved further Westwards. Artists, writers, French immigrants, musicians and intellectuals all moved in alongside craftsmen and shopkeepers. Soho had become the place in London for people who did not quite fit the conventional mould. 

The legal reformer Samuel Romilly was born at No. 18 in 1757. In September 1764 a young eight year old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his family took lodgings at 20 Frith Street whilst on their Grand tour of Europe. Mozart would perform publicly whilst staying in Soho and created some of his earliest compositions during his time here. Painter John Constable lived on Frith Street from 1810-1811. 

Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, was a frequent visitor to 5 Frith Street when his protégé Mary Barber lived there. Mary Barber was arrested in 1734 for smuggling Swift’s controversial political manuscripts into the country that heavily criticised Robert Walpole and his Government. The charges were eventually dropped. 

Who Is William Hazlitt?

From 1830 6 Frith Street was the home of essayist William Hazlitt and is where he died that very year.

Hazlitt was born in 1778 in Maidstone, Kent but spent much of his childhood in Ireland and then America where his father, a Unitarian preacher, supported the rebels during the American Revolution. 

He initially considered following his father into the ministry, and then for a time determined to become a painter. Instead, however, he found his vocation as a writer.

Hazlitt became one of the great critics and essayists of the early 19th century, writing about literature, politics, theatre, emotions and human nature. in 1823 for example he wrote an essay called On The Pleasure Of Hating. In it he explores why humans find a perverse gratification in malice and hostility and how it gradually destroys people. He also became particularly associated with the Romantics, knowing figures including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb. 

Successes and Failures

Hazlitt was politically radical, supporting the ideals of the French Revolution and later campaigning for parliamentary reform. His politics could make him controversial, and his uncompromising personality brought him regularly into conflict with other writers, publishers and friends.

In 1808 he married fellow writer Sarah Stoddart, and they lived in Winterslow, just outside Salisbury. They had three children together, however sadly only one, William, survived infancy. His marriage ended in separation and in his forties he had a passionate but disastrous affair with Sarah Walker, the 19 year old daughter of his landlady. He found out she had another lover and he then documented the torturous experience in his work Liber Amoris (1823).

Hazlitt had a number of successes but also very often struggled to make enough money. By the late 1820s, Hazlitt’s finances and health were deteriorating. In early 1830 he moved into lodgings in 6 Frith Street, dying from stomach cancer. 

He spent the final months of his life there, continuing to write, confined to a small room at the back.

Hazlitt died at the house on 18th September 1830, aged 52, in a state of squalor. His son William and his friend Charles Lamb were at his bedside. There is a rather macabre story that, after he died, his landlady concealed his body beneath the bed while showing the room to other prospective tenants. The story has been repeated for generations, although it could well be be just that, a story.

The plaque was installed outside the building in 1905, making it one of the earliest literary plaques. 

Old Buildings, New Purposes

In the 1980s Soho was gritty, seedy and still arty and Bohemian. This little row of Georgian townhouses was under threat but gained a new lease of life.

Peter McKay and Douglas Blain were two men who were very interested in London’s architectural heritage and protecting it. They were founding members of the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust, a heritage charity set up to initially fight for the protection of the Georgian townhouses in Spitalfields. I have written about them before here in my blog post about Dennis Severs’ House. 

They were both at a party in 1986 when they overheard an architect friend complaining to another guest that one of his clients was pressing him to disfigure an unmodernised terrace of early 18th century houses by converting them into flats. This would have meant ripping out much of the listed panelling, two staircases and several original marble chimneypieces. Peter and Douglas were naturally horrified. 

Hazlitt’s Hotel

The next day they went to Soho to find the three properties 5, 6 and 7 Frith Street. On the spur of the moment the pair put in a slightly higher bid and got their hands on a contract.

But, they did not have a plan of what to do with them. Douglas Blain later recounted: ‘The morning after we had completed the deal we were standing outside wondering what to do next when two local residents walked by. Looking up at the buildings’ crumbling facade, which still had a sign in place advertising their previous use as a nurses’ hostel for the neighbouring NHS trust. One of our new neighbours said “Hostel? Why not try just leaving the S off?”

Six months later the hotel was open for business as one of London’s first boutique hotels and one of the only hotels in the Soho area at the time. 

The Hotel Today 

Hazlitt’s has been extremely popular ever since and has been a favourite of writers particularly, with many major publishing houses nearby. 

They have two bookcases with books of authors who have stayed here, many of them signed first editions. 

Walking around the hotel you feel the uneven wooden floors and notice the slightly wonky doorframes, as the buildings have settled and adjusted for over three hundred years. 

Heading into each room, you will notice that each room is named after someone related to the history of the building in some way. 

All the furniture is practically unique to every room. Peter McKay would spend a great deal of his time sourcing original Georgian and Victorian items. 

It has a calm, elegant and tucked away feel to it, even though you are in the middle of the city, with Soho literally on your doorstep.

Since the 1980s they company have added two other lovely hotels: Batty Langley’s in Spitalfields and The Rookery in Smithfield, also in historic buildings. They see themselves as custodians of these irreplaceable slices of history and heritage.

Find out more about the hotels and staying there here. When I stayed I combined it with a show at Ronnie Scott’s and a delicious dinner at Quo Vadis.

Thank you for reading, more London history below!