Daily
Telegraph, 11 March 1965:
"Supported by the sympathy of Mr. Henry Brooke, their M.P., occupants of Victorian houses in Alexandra Road, St. John's Wood, are protesting against a property company's scheme for redevelopment of 15 acres which will involve the demolition of, among others, Lily Langtry home (...)
I reproduce Geoffrey Fletcher's drawing of this, Leighton House.
It is said to be haunted by an apparition, occasionally seen in her boudoir. Another tradition is that the glazed corridor between the street and the front door was built to give privacy to the visits of King Edward VII.
About a thousand people live in Alexandra Road. They have formed a protective association which is meeting the developers at Hampstead Town Hall on Monday." (quote)
Evening Standard, 1 April 1965:
"It's the ghost of Lily Langtry" - As queer things happen in her old home...
Table's bang in the night and voices whisper in the darkness in the Victorian house in Alexandra Road, St. John's Wood, but the people living there do not stir from their beds.
For they are convinced it is the ghost of Lillie Langtry, actress and society beauty of Victorian and Edwardian times. She lived at Leighton House for a number of years. It is said she built a glass corridor connecting the front door and the roadway so that King Edward VII could visit her in privacy (...)
Now Leighton House, with its stained-glass windows and marble floors, has been earmarked for demolition to make way for a housing scheme.
Mrs. Electra Yaras a dark-haired Athenian who bought the lease of the "hunted house" 18 years ago, said today: "I am all in favour of progress, but it will be terrible if they pull down this historic building. It has so many memories. Lily Langtry's ghost appeared one day at my bedroom door and asked if I would like to have a baby boy. Some time later my son was born in that very room - her old boudoir."
Mrs. Yaras, 39 year-old step-daughter of general Theodorus Pangalos, a Greek leader of the 1920s, admits that her first encounter with Jersey's Liliy's ghost was a little frightening.
"I awoke to see a book I have been reading banging up and down on the bedside table," She said. "My husband woke to ... we were powerless to move. But I have become used to her visits now. It was with her approval that I converted the stables of Leighton House into a studio."
Mrs Yaras who works as a tour director and has travelled throughout Europe, claims she has seen Lily Langtry "vanishing over the garden rockery into a misty cloud."
The decoration of many of the rooms at Leighton House have not been touched since her departure. Painted cherubs still dance on the ceiling of the drawing room, and an adjoining conservatoire retains its original tapestries and wood carvings..."
As she surveyed the house, Mrs. Yaras said: "It would be wonderful if all this could be saved when the new flats are built here."
Daily Telegraph, 20 August 1966:
"...A private
development scheme for a 13-acre site on the Eyre Estate, St. John's
Wood, has been dropped after months of negotiation with Camden council.
Now the Labour controlled council is to buy the site for nearly £1
million.
South
Bank Properties bought a 125-year lease on the site nearly three years
ago and was given planning permission to build 326 flats, 115 houses, 29
maisonettes, 18 shops and two public houses..." (quote)
North London Press, 12 April 1968:
“... What kind of woman was Mrs. Langtry
owner of Leighton House. Her beauty took all London and most Royalty by storm.
When she was just 23 she became the favourite of Edward VII, then Prince
of Wales. Edward
VII often came visiting to Leighton House. Its privacy was attractive. The
steps up to the front door were glassed in to shield Lillie and her high-born
visitors from the curious public.
Mrs.
Langtry was so lovely that, in her first meeting with the pre-Raphaelite painter, he
insisted he be the first to paint her. When the picture was hung at the Royal
Academy, crowds were kept from crushing against it by heavy ropes.
She
was also intelligent - although some call it short-sightedly to call it
"coldness". A dean's daughter, with six brothers, she had the
"mind of a man" - comments one biographer. She
used charm and mind to make her living. Unlucky to marriage, she gathered a
massive income on the side from masculine admirers. "Men showered diamonds on me," she recalled in later
life.
Her
presents were not "payments for
favours". Once, when a royal admirer gave her a huge emerald ring, he
clumsily asked: "Am-I to be rewarded
for my generosity?" Lillie, all righteous indignation, flung the ring into the fire. The unfortunate
man, horrified, grovelled at the coals for his lost ring and failing to rescue it, left the house discomfited. Lillie had made her virtuous point. But she kept the emerald! She had merely pretended to throw!
Her panache was the talk of London society even when (the affair with) Edward had cooled, and Lillie to earn money had become an actress, she daringly alluded to their romance on the stage of the Imperial Theatre. King Edward and Queen Alexandra were in the Royal box!
It was during a performance of "The Crossways". She had to take jewels from a casket and thank her stage lover for them. Instead, she turned away from the actor to the Royal box. She took up every piece of jewellery and said:
"Here is the tiara you gave me in Biarritz, the necklace of diamonds and rubies you fastened around my white throat in Bad Homburg, the rings, bracelets, brooches, you showered upon me in the glorious past of our flaming passion." Edward was touched, and the audience gasped with admiration at her daring.
What will happen to Mrs. Langtry Leighton House?
(Sir) John Betjeman may take up the case. And the house may one day stand restored, a monument to the Victorian era and Edward's lovely mistress. Or Leighton House may come down, and huge concrete blocks grow where it stood..." (quote)
Sunday Times, 7 August 1969:
"... The home in St. John's Wood where beautiful actress Lillie Langtry used to entertain Edward VII and which is in imminent danger of being ploughed under the council's bulldozers, has found a wealthy champion. Not surprisingly, it is an American. He is a 57-year-old Texan oil man Ted Weiner whose working art museum I wrote about a few days ago.
He saw the house, photographed it in detail, and immediately asked about the possibilities of transporting it to Langtry Town - in West Texas - which was named after the famous society beauty at the turn of the century.
"If I can't take it away I will do anything to have it restored and kept as a monument to a wonderful romantic English period" said Mr Weiner. "I wouldn't ask anything in return. To destroy it would be a criminal shame."
The Late Victorian property, Leighton House, is to be torn down with other houses in Alexandra Road to make room for flats ..." (quote)
The Daily Telegraph, 9 October 1971:
"...The Environment Department has decided not to preserve the house in South Hampstead where Lillie Langtry, the actress, used to receive Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales.
Leighton House has a glass canopy leading from the front door to the street, said to have been put there to enable the Prince to make his visits without being observed. The house is in Alexandra Road, on a site which Camden Borough Council has started to clear to provide council homes.
Mr. Andrew Yaras, whose family has lived there for many years, is due to move out this weekend. He is afraid that the bulldozers will then move in.
Environment Department inspectors have decided that the house is not worth saving because there are other similar mid-Victorian houses in the area.
The Department pointed out yesterday that the homes of kings' mistresses were not rare enough to merit preservation on their intrinsic value alone.
Miss Adrienne Corri, the actress, is leading the fight to save the building, with the Hampstead and St. John's Wood preservation societies, Sir John Betjeman and Sir Hugh Casson.
Miss Corri said that it would make an ideal theatre museum. "It is just the sort of house one would expect a king's mistress to have in Victorian times. There is one delightful domed room, with velvet hangings and a mural of the British Raj on the wall. It will be a tragedy if it is destroyed".
If the house had to come down, it was hoped that some features would be preserved, perhaps in the Victoria and Albert Museum. These included a room festooned with moulded cherubs and a rare pre-Raphaelite stained-glass fanlight.
Camden council said that their scheme had been known for several years and that it was too late to change it..." (quote)
