The Owners of Brandenburgh House: Lord Melcombe

When Elizabeth Craven moved back to England in 1792 as the wife of the Margrave of Anspach, they bought Brandenburgh House in Hammersmith, a mansion that had once been owned by George Bubb-Doddington, Lord Melcombe.

They had to remove a lot of Melcombe's ostentatious bad taste, particularly a marble floor in the upstairs gallery, which loaded it down and put stress on the building.

Other things that had to go were Melcombe's crest, in pebbles, set into the middle of the front lawn; a hideous fireplace hung with spars representing icicles, and a bed with purple hangings, lined with orange, crowned by a dome of peacock's feathers.

One day when Doddington had been showing the gallery to Edward, Duke of York, with its door of white marble, supported by lapis lazuli columns, its collection of busts and statues, and its inlaid marble floor, he is supposed to have said, “Sir, some persons tell me that this room ought to be on the ground.” “Don't worry Mr. Doddington,” replied the Prince, “it will soon be there.” [1]

Melcombe was a very colourful character and his complicated love life provided juicy gossip for his contemporaries for many years. The son of an apothecary, his original name was Bubb, which he didn't like so he adopted the more dignified Doddington, a name he took from the uncle who left him an immense fortune, together with a vast mansion called Eastbury in Dorset, designed by Sir John Vanbrugh. The house at Hammersmith was not his main residence, but merely his pied-a-terre close to London. He gave it the very peculiar name of "La Trappe" - a Trappist monastery - and gave sumptuous dinners there for his London friends that were anything but monastic.

Doddington was a loyal supporter of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and of the Walpoles, so that after a not-very-distinguished political career, as M.P. for Winchelsea he was made one of the Lords of the Treasury, and eventually acquired the very lustrous title of Lord Melcombe of Melcombe-Regis in 1761. Certainly a step up from "Bubb"!

Doddington was married to Katherine Behan, whom he did not publicly acknowledge as his wife. She always passed for his mistress. The reason for this was peculiar. He had once loved a certain Mrs Strawbridge, whom Horace Walpole calls "a very handsome black woman". She lived in a house on the corner of Savile Row. Doddington became so enamoured of Mrs Strawbridge that he gave her a bond for ten thousand pounds - an immense sum - to be paid if he ever married anyone else.

He had reason to repent of this when some years later he did want to marry someone else. He had to marry Mrs Behan secretly, and pass her off as his mistress, until Mrs Strawbridge died in 1743. It was on this Mrs. Strawbridge that the ballad was composed:

"My strawberry - my strawberry

Shall bear away the belle".

Melcombe was devoted to Mrs Behan, and when she died in 1756, he erected an obelisk, surmounted by an urn of bronze, to her memory, in front of his villa at Hammersmith.

Horace Walpole writes that Melcombe was "vain, fickle, ambitious, servile, and corrupt." He adds "Nothing was more glaring in Doddington than his want of taste, and the tawdry ostentation in his dress and furniture of his houses. At Eastberry, in the great bedchamber, hung with the richest red velvet, was pasted, on every pannel of the velvet, his crest (a hunting horn supported by an eagle) cut out of gilt leather. The foot-cloth round the bed was a mosaick of the pocket-flaps and cuffs of all his embroidered clothes."

A contemporary unkindly noticed that ‘His bulk and corpulency gave full display to a vast expanse and profusion of brocade and embroidery.’ However, Melcombe had his talents, and both his diary and some of his poems were published. He was regarded by some as a clown, and by other as a wit.

Once at a very tedious Treasury meeting Lord Sundon laughed heartily at something Doddington said; when he was gone, Winnington said, “Doddington, you call Sundon stupid and slow, and yet you see how quick he took what you said.” “Oh no,” replied Doddington, “he was only laughing now at what I said last treasury day.”

Melcombe once fell asleep after dinner with Sir Richard Temple, Lord Cobham, who reproached him with his drowsiness. Doddington denied it and offered to repeat all that Cobham had been saying. Cobham challenged him to do so. Doddington repeated a story, and Cobham admitted he had been telling it. “Well,” said Doddington, “I went to sleep because I knew that about this time of day you would tell that story.”

Prince Frederick once said "This is a strange country, this England; I am told Doddington is reckoned a clever man; yet I got £5000 out of him this morning, and he has no chance of ever seeing it again."

Sir Charles Hanbury ridiculed him in a well-known dialogue with Gyles Earle, and in a ballad entitled “A Grub upon Bubb.”

Melcombe had no children. His house at Hammersmith was left to a Mr. Wyndham, who took down the obelisk, and sold it.

A rare view of a house being demolished: Eastbury in about 1780

His estate at Eastbury was inherited by Richard Grenville, first Earl Temple, including the vast mansion designed by Vanbrugh; which Temple ordered to be  pulled down in 1780. So nothing is left today of either that or Brandenburgh House except drawings and descriptions.

To find out more about Elizabeth Craven read,

[1] Walpole Memoirs of Reign of George II.
The New Monthly Magazine, Volume 3 (1822)

 Walpole's Memoirs of George II
"Rowe's Ballad on Doddington's Mrs Strawbridge".
Yale edition of Walpole's Correspondence vol. 33 p.556.
 Lord Melcombe's Diary.
The Wits and Beaux of Society by A.T.Thompson.
https://www.dorsetlife.co.uk/2007/10/a-lost-mansion-of-dorset/