Lottery Hall was an elegant Regency house fronting Orchard Place, just north of its junction with Briton Street. A description was given in auctioneer's particulars of January 1836. On the ground floor were a dining room (24 feet 6 inches by 14 feet 6 inches), a drawing room (28 feet by 14 feet 6 inches), a morning room and a gentleman's room. The first floor comprised four best bedrooms, a drawing room and water closets, with three servants' rooms over. There were two bays in the east elevation. The property stretched back to Charlotte Street, a depth of 211 feet, and encompassed a walled garden, greenhouse, double coach house and three-stall stable.

The house was one of the first projects of John Osbaldiston, formerly a Southampton baker, after a major win on the state lottery in 1807. It was originally his residence, but as the money drained away it became let to a series of noblemen and gentlemen. These included the Earl of Craven, Earl Belmore, the 1st Earl Nelson (brother of the Admiral), Lord Bridport, Sir George Pownall, bart, and General Sir John MacLeod.

The property was sold at public auction on 27 January 1836 for £2,790: a financial disaster for Osbaldiston who had a few years earlier refused an offer of £7,000. It was advertised as making a first-rate hotel, near the proposed railway terminus to London and the new Itchen floating bridge - offering "a decided certainty of a rapid fortune."

In the event, Lottery Hall remained as a private residence until the 1880s. Occupants later in the century included George Saintsbury, secretary and superintendent of Southampton docks (his second son, also George, the eminent literary scholar, essayist, critic and historian, was born here on 23 October 1845), Joseph Rodney Croskey, American consul to Southampton, ship owner and political ally of Richard Andrews, Dr Charles Pardey and the surgeon James Oliver. After a time as a lodging house, it became, c 1911, the International Stewards' Club, an address given by several Titanic crew. Its last appearance in the directories is 1934-5, when it was the "Cosmopolitan Club." The house survived until c.1938, when it was demolished as part of a redevelopment scheme.


Further reading:

Southampton Occasional Notes, 2nd Series, by ‘Townsman’, p16. (HS/h)
Southampton Through Time, by Jeffery Pain, p86. (HS/d)


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