The Stamp Stair
Sir William Chambers (1723 to 1796) · 1780s
Tucked into the West Wing is a second great staircase, plainer than the Nelson Stair but in some ways more beautiful. It rises in a tall, narrow well lit from a skylight far above, and each stone flight turns a corner and seems to hang in the air. The name comes from the Stamp Office, the department that once occupied this wing and collected the stamp duty on legal documents, newspapers and playing cards, one of the taxes that helped provoke the American colonies into revolt.
Look at the way Chambers handled the space. The stair is strictly functional, built to carry clerks and messengers between floors of offices, yet the proportions of the well, the plain iron rail and the play of light down the walls make it feel like a piece of sculpture. The treads are cantilevered from the wall, each resting on the one below, the same technique used on the Nelson Stair, and if you stand at the bottom and look up the flights spiral toward the light like the inside of a shell. Because the wing survived the war intact, the Stamp Stair is original eighteenth century work rather than a reconstruction.
The West Wing was used by the Inland Revenue until the nineteen nineties and has since been restored as exhibition rooms for the Somerset House programme. The stair is often used by artists and designers who show here as a setting for installations, and it appears in fashion shoots more often than any other part of the building. Even when nothing is on, it is worth walking up simply to feel how well a staircase can be made.
Did You Know? Stamp duty, the tax that once gave this staircase its name, was so hated in the American colonies that it became a cause of the revolution.
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