22 Arlington Street was designed by William Kent for the Hon. Henry Pelham from 1741 and completed after Kent's death in 1748 by Stephen Wright. Sir Sampson Gideon (1st Baron Eardley from 1789) lived there from 1787 to 1798 employing Dance to add a large new dining room, next to the old one, on the side facing the courtyard towards Arlington Street. As well as the drawing catalogued above there are draft accounts (on an unexecuted design for Freefolk near Whitchurch, [SM D3/14/4]) inscribed Amt of Bill, for Ld Eardley / Examined & Corrected totalling 2310 plus 5 per cent commission (presumably for Dance).

How Dance received the job is not known. That there was a connection between him and Lord Eardley is established by an entry in Soane's Journal No.1 (at the Soane Museum) for 24 October 1794: Called on him [Dance] & went with him to Lord Eardley's. Farington noted in his diary (13 December 1795) 'Dance was yesterday with Lord Eardley, who he describes to be a good humoured man, that has many laughable oddities' and earlier (5 July 1794) 'Hearne does not set to Dance today. The latter is to pass the day at Lord Eardleys, at Belvedere.' Belvedere, near Erith, Kent was rebuilt c.1775 by James Stuart for Sir Sampson Gideon (later Lord Eardley) who, at the age of 17, had inherited a fortune of half a million pounds from his father of the same name. Much more interesting than his son, the elder Gideon was descended from Portuguese Jews and was instrumental in consolidating and reducing the interest on the National Debt (DNB).

The chimney-piece no longer survives at 22 Arlington Street. The Large Dining Room was elaborately redecorated in a Pompeian manner in 1840 by an Italian fresco painter, Eduardo Latilla. An account in the Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal (1840, III, p.226) states that 'the chimney and fire-place is of black marble with ormolu ornaments' and this must have replaced Dance's chimney-piece. The black marble chimney-piece was itself removed in one of two subsequent redecorations.

Purchased in 1947 by the Eagle Star Insurance Company, the 18th-century part of the house was restored over the following years: in the course of this work, the Large Dining Room (now Music Room) was accidentally gutted by fire in 1978. Earlier investigations showed that the ceiling had been a shallow vault and it was returned to that form and the room rebuilt in 'a style of decoration in keeping with 1790'. Dance's authorship was not known at that time.

LITERATURE. P. Campbell, ed., A House in Town: 22 Arlington Street, its owners and builders, 1984, passim.