Fit For A Royal Feast

A banqueting house built to welcome George I miraculously escaped destruction in the early 20th century and has been splendidly restored. William Aslet reports Photographs by Will Pryce

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ON August 13, 1729, George I and his daughter-in-law, Caroline, came to dine with the former Secretary of State for Scotland, James Johnston, and his wife, Catherine, at their house in Twickenham. They were accompanied by the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole; several leading nobles; Caroline’s youngest children by her husband George Augustus (later George II); their own servants, who came bearing the royal plate; and even their personal confectioner.

The house itself, however, was not large enough to seat the whole party. Instead, while the gentlemen sat in the main hall, the ladies dined in the octagonal room roughly opposite, which had been newly built to designs by the Scottish-born architect James Gibbs, perhaps the most fashionable designer then working in London.

A plan drawn up by the Johnstons’ butler records that guests in the Octagon feasted in a grand style. The main course saw the table piled with delicacies, including game birds, fish, oysters and chicken served with peaches. Queen Caroline sat at the head of a U-shaped table and, charmingly, the children served the food.

The focal point of the evening was when, as the plan records, between the main course and the desert ‘Mr Johnston Come in & Paide his Honers to the Queene all was very merrie & highlie pleased’.

This was not the Hanoverians’ first visit to the Octagon. This had come at least as early as 1724; Daniel Defoe noted that ‘the King was pleased to dine in… a pleasant Room which Mr Johnston built, joyning to the Green House; from whence is a Prospect every way into the most delicious Gardens’ (Fig 1). Writing later, Gibbs noted that ‘he designed it for an entertaining Room, the house being too small for that Purpose’.