Pall Mall, South Side, Past Buildings: No 68 Pall Mall, Vulliamy's

No. 68 Pall Mall: Vulliamy's

The house later numbered 68 Pall Mall was occupied from 1765 to 1854 by successive members of the clockmaking family of Vulliamy. (fn. 1) Justin Vulliamy worked for the royal clockmaker Benjamin Gray (fn. 2) who first had a shop on the west side of St. James's Street, on part of the site of the present Alliance Assurance Company building; in 1752–3 Gray moved across to the premises in Pall Mall. (fn. 1) Justin Vulliamy had married Gray's daughter and, as the principal legatee under his father-in-law's will, succeeded to the business in Pall Mall in 1764. (fn. 3) He in turn was followed by his son Benjamin who died in 1811; (fn. 4) and later by Benjamin's son, Benjamin Lewis. The firm came to an end on the death of Benjamin Lewis in 1854. (fn. 5)

Lewis Vulliamy (1791–1871), the architect of Dorchester House, Park Lane, and of numerous London churches, (fn. 6) was a younger brother of Benjamin Lewis. The latter's younger son George John Vulliamy (1817–86) was also an architect and was employed by the Metropolitan Board of Works as their superintending architect from 1861 to 1886. (fn. 2)

The house occupied by Vulliamy's appears to have been a modest building of late seventeenthor early eighteenth-century date, with a fourstoreyed front, three windows wide, having a bandcourse at each floor level. Despite its use as a shop, the ground storey had kept its domestic character, with two shuttered windows on the east side of the doorway.