So sad, the sight of that strangely beautiful building at 20 St Michael’s Street, Oxford, known as Vanbrugh House, which the city council has left empty for a decade; good news, therefore, that it will soon become part of a 22-room hotel. But why is it called Vanbrugh House, and how did it come to be built in the first place? According to a 1920 publication by The Oxford Architectural and Historical Society the reason is clear. It states: “There seems no doubt that No 20 St Michael’s Street is a minor work of the great 18th-century architect Vanbrugh, the designer of Blenheim Palace. The enormous Doric order, the apron blocks and heavy keystones to the windows, which have no architraves, are all characteristics of his heavy and monumental manner.”

Nikolaus Pevsner, though, is less sure. He wrote: “It is a bit of a joke and must be by an imitator of Blenheim.” Later he even refers to it as “almost a parody of Blenheim”.

I gather this information from a booklet (Vanbrugh House, Oxford, 1982) by Edward Hibbert, who for 40 years was a solicitor with Marshall and Galpin, which occupied the building for more than half a century, and who, together with his brother Christopher, edited that mine of local history The Encyclopaedia of Oxford.

He explained that whether Vanbrugh designed the building or not, he certainly had close connections with it; for the house was home to three generations of the Peisley family of Oxford builders, from the late 17th century until the mid-18th. And it was Bartholomew Peisley II (1654-1715) who as master mason working under the direction of Sir John Vanbrugh built the grand bridge now spanning the lake at Blenheim. His daughter, Mary, married Henry Joynes, the clerk of works at Blenheim from 1705-1715.

A report from the Treasury to the Duke of Marlborough, dated September 1710, states: “The great arch of the bridge is keyed and has succeeded to admiration,which Peisley the builder is very proud and overjoyed at, it being a great and nice piece of work.”

Mr Hibbert wrote in his booklet: “Opinions differ as to whether the design was by Sir John Vanbrugh. Bearing in mind the close working relationship between Vanbrugh and Peisley at Blenheim it is quite possible that Vanbrugh drew some sketches for the stone front of the building and may well have stayed or dined with Peisley.”

The building behind the magnificent facade dates from the 17th century. In 1671 it was leased by the city council to Matthew Jellyman, who was appointed jailer of the Bocardo Prison; and in 1680 this lease was renewed at a rent of two shillings a year plus “a couple of good fat pullets”. It was this lease that was later assigned to Bartholomew Peisley I (who built the SCR at St John’s, completed the library and chapel at St Edmund Hall and was involved in supplying Headington stone for St Paul’s).

Vanbrugh House contains two beautifully panelled rooms and a fine 17th-century staircase. Its cellars also contain remains of the city walls which ran along the north side of St Michael’s Street to the North Gate, near which stood the Bocardo Prison, the miserable final home of the martyred bishops Latimer and Ridley and Archbishop Cranmer, which was demolished in 1771.

Bartholomew Peisley III (1683-1727) completed the transformation of the facade of Vanburgh House in about 1721. Diarist and librarian Thomas Hearne described Mr Peisley as “a noted wealthy mason” and his widow — who later married the president of Trinity College — as “a very pretty woman”.

The new hotel, which planners have approved, will comprise numbers 20-24 St Michael’s Street. North Gate Hall, the imposing former United Methodist Free Church at number 18 (next door to Vanbrugh House), was designed by local architect JC Curtis and built in 1871. It is also council-owned and contains remnants of a bastion of the medieval city wall. It remains empty and, according to a heritage assessment by the council’s own heritage and specialist services team, shows “clear signs of lack of maintenance”.