Adam’s scheme for the Red Lion Inn, Piccadilly may have been intended for the public house in Duke of York Street. The current Red Lion dates back to 1820, when Henry Watts, victualler, demolished properties on the west side of York Street in order to rebuild and extend an earlier eighteenth-century inn.

The earlier building, also called the Red Lion, can be traced back to at least the 1780s and was positioned on the southern part of the site now occupied by the present pub.

Bolton suggested that the undated scheme formed part of a proposal for a new house on the site of the inn, but the plans may also be read as designs for alterations and extensions to the public house.

SM Adam volume 7/152 records the neighbouring property as a stable block belonging to a Mr Hall. The plan also notes the ‘Through fair to Hyde Park Lane’.

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 45; F. H. W. Sheppard (ed.), ‘Duke of York Street’, Survey of London: Volumes 29 and 30, St James Westminster, Part 1, 1960, pp. 285-287; Ralph Rylance, The Epicure’s Almanack: Eating and Drinking in Regency London, Janet Ing Freeman (ed.), 2013

Anna McAlaney, 2021