Promenades Through London: Mayfair

The heart of the ton, the district of Mayfair is one most readers and writers of historical romance are familiar with. But where is Mayfair?

Mayfair whose oldest houses date from the early years of the eighteenth century is strictly speaking only a very small district but we have come to consider its boundaries Piccadilly on the south on the north Oxford Street on the east Bond Street and on the west Park Lane. - E.V. Lucas “A Wanderer in London”

Named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place until 1686, the actual area was not developed until the mid 17th century, after which it soon became a fashionable residential district.

In that small area bordered by four major London streets resided many of Society’s brightest and most famous. Apsley House at Hyde Park Corner; Gloucester House and the gorgeous palace, Devonshire House along Piccadilly; Park Lane boasted Londonderry House, Dorchester House, Dudley House and Grosvenor House; and Berkeley Square, the “darkest square in London,” was adjacent to Lansdowne House.

Of the smaller streets within the district, none is so famous as Curzon Street. It was here where the infamous Reverend Alexander Keith joined in matrimony as many as six thousand couples a year in a little chapel of his own with a church porch close to Curzon Chapel. Among those that took advantage of Keith’s Chapel was James, fourth Duke of Hamilton and the younger of the beautiful Miss Gunnings. Keith meanwhile died in the Fleet prison, and Curzon Chapel was demolished to make way for a townhouse built for the 9th Duchess of Marlborough.

At its east end Curzon Street narrows to a passage between the gardens of Devonshire House and Lansdowne House which takes the foot passenger into Berkeley Street. This passage was closed by a set of vertical iron bars on either end after a highwayman in the late 18th century, whilst escaping from a successful coup in Piccadilly evaded his pursuers by dashing down the steps and along this passage. It was in No 19 Curzon Street where Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli) died in 1881.

On Bolton Street lived Fanny Burney, Madame D’Arblay, at No 12. Emma, Lady Hamilton and the celebrated actor Edmund Kean both resided in Clarges Street; Prince Lieven, the husband of one of Almack’s patronesses and also Russian Ambassador, resided at No 30 Dover Street.

To the south of Piccadilly lay St. James’s. Somewhat of an extension of “Mayfair”, the district housed London’s greatest clubs, special government offices, foreign embassies, St. James’s Palace–where up until Prince Albert’s death in 1861, the Queen held her levees and drawing rooms–and other aristocratic palaces and fashionable addresses. White’s, a Tory club famous for its bow window, was situated 37-38 St James; just down the road from the Whig’s Brooks’. Boodle’s (left), directly across from Brooks’s was at No 28. By the 1880s, these were joined by clubs devoted to all sorts of interests and backgrounds: politics, literature, arts, sciences, military units, sports, social clubs and even, for the first time, ladies’ clubs.

Cleveland Row, adjacent to Pall Mall, and Carlton House Terrace parallel to the south, were the most fashionable addresses up until the Second World War. The latter a street built by Nash to replace Carlton House in the 1830s, each terrace consisted of nine large houses. Built without mews in order to make the best possible use of the view of the park, and also to present an attractive facade to the park, the service accommodation was placed in two stories of basements (rather than the usual one) and underneath broad terraces between the houses and the park. Lord Palmerston resided at No 5 from 1840-1846, Gladstone at 4 in 1856 and No 11 from 1857-75, while Lord Curzon lived at No 1 for twenty years. Nos 8 and 9 housed the German Embassy.

Bridgewater House was to be found in Cleveland Row, the former site of Cleveland House, a residence of Charles II’s longtime mistress, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland. Stafford House, or Sutherland House, the residence of the Dukes of Sutherland, was so magnificent, Queen Victoria said “I have come from my House to your Palace“. Standing at the end of Cleveland Row, the magnificent Georgian style mansion was famous for the sweeping grand staircase featured in many Edwardian memoirs. Starring Millie, Duchess of Sutherland, she is eternally captured in ink, “standing in her diamond tiara at the top of the staircase in Stafford House, receiving her lines of mounting guests while the strains of waltz music floated from the ballroom.”

Mayfair being the most aristocratic neighborhood in London and the home of Society, society (with a little ’s’) could be found in Kensington and Bayswater, two districts both south-east and north-east, respectively, of Kensington Gardens. Spacious mansions, every convenience, liveried footmen and so on were to be found here, and entertaining and decorating, courtesy of Whiteleys and other luxurious department stores, could be done inexpensively. But a Mayfair residence was key to entree to the most exclusive of circles and few who had not been born into it, if any, were able to obtain it.