CHAPTER III
Bourdon Street and Grosvenor Hill Area
This former mews area in the south-east corner of the
estate was originally part of the large parcel of ground
fronting north on Grosvenor Street and west on Davies
Street which was taken under a building agreement in
August 1720 by the estate surveyor, Thomas Barlow, and
subsequently leased to him en bloc in July 1721. (ref. 1) This
particular part of Barlow's ground formed a hinterland
behind the main street frontages of Grosvenor Street and
Davies Street, and here he laid out a complex pattern of
mews and narrow streets which has in large measure been
retained, although several changes in street naming have
taken place.
The name Bourdon Street originally only applied to a
passage into Davies Street immediately to the south of
Bourdon House. When rebuilding took place on the north
side of Berkeley Square in 1820–2 the site of this passage
was shifted a few yards further to the north. (ref. 2) The next
section of Bourdon Street, to the south of the present
Grosvenor Hill Court, was known as John Street until
renamed in 1881. The streets in the central part of the area
were collectively known as Grosvenor Mews until the
southern arm was renamed as part of Bourdon Street in
1881 and the passage to the north and west of St. George's
Buildings was called Bourdon Place. The remainder of
Grosvenor Mews was given the more respectable name of
Grosvenor Hill in 1947. Of the streets at the periphery of
the area, Broadbent Street was originally Little Grosvenor
Street until renamed in 1936 and formerly also extended to
the south of Grosvenor Hill across the site now occupied
by Grosvenor Hill Court; Jones Street has retained its
original name, after William Jones, yeoman, who leased a
large plot here in 1723; (ref. 3) Bloomfield Place acquired its
name in about 1891 (see the account of Bloomfield Flats
below); and the passage into Grosvenor Street by the side
of the Aeolian Hall was numbered as part of Bourdon
Street in 1936.
Within this maze of narrow mews, streets and passageways Barlow sub-let small plots to builders and other
developers, usually for terms of about sixty years even
though his own lease was for ninety-nine years. (ref. 4) The sublesses erected coach-houses, stables, farriers' shops and
the like, generally with dwelling rooms above, as well as
several small houses. There was from the first a substantial
resident population in the area, consisting predominantly
of coachmen, grooms and others involved with horses and
carriages, but also including domestic servants, building
workers, victuallers and a variety of lesser tradesmen. (ref. 5) By
1841, before the building of several blocks of model
lodging-houses actually increased the population, there
were over eight hundred people living here. (ref. 6)
In such an area there was inevitably much poverty. A
charity book of the 1830's kept in the vestry of St.
George's, Hanover Square, shows that many inhabitants
of Grosvenor Mews were recipients of relief, and in 1858,
when the prevalence of disease in the neighbourhood led to
the prosecution of a house-owner for allowing part of his
premises to be dangerous to the public health, it was
revealed that his house 'contained fifty or sixty persons'. (ref. 7)
By this time the stirrings of the Victorian conscience had
begun to have some practical effect. In 1853 St. George's
Buildings, the first of several blocks of artisans' dwellings
to be erected on the Grosvenor estates in Mayfair and
Pimlico, provided accommodation for thirty-two families,
and this was followed by three other small tenement blocks
in the area. At the same time as St. George's Buildings,
public baths and wash houses were built on a former
coach-builder's premises behind Davies Street. The
spiritual needs of the poor were the principal considerations behind the erection of the mission church of St.
Mary's in 1880–1 and this was followed in 1883–4 by the
provision of a parochial institution and dispensary 'for the
good of the poor'. Considerations of health, morality, and,
no doubt, spirituality prompted the adaptation of, at first,
stables and then a former public house in Bourdon Street
as a refuge for fallen women, and eventually the building in
1889–90 of St. George's Shelter, which was equipped with
a small chapel. All of these buildings are described in
greater detail below.
The increasing use of mews buildings for business and
commercial purposes has led to a considerable decline in
the residential population of the area during the present
century, but in 1971 some 275 persons were still living
there, principally in the blocks of working-class housing
and in the new flats of Grosvenor Hill Court. (ref. 8)
Of the eighteenth-century building fabric of the area
nothing appears to remain. The earliest surviving
buildings are on the south side of Bourdon Street at the
west corner with Jones Street. No. 4 Bourdon Street,
which has a plain stock-brick façade, two windows wide,
above ground-floor garages, was built by Thomas Cubitt
in 1821–2 as stabling for No. 28 Berkeley Square. It was
originally three storeys high but has recently been raised. (ref. 9)
No. 6 Bourdon Street and No. 2 Jones Street, which have
plain rendered façades above ground-floor shop fronts, are
the much-altered survivors of a group of three small
houses which were also built in 1821–2 for John Bailey, the
proprietor of the hotel which stood on the site of No. 25
Berkeley Square. (ref. 10) They have three main storeys and
garrets within a mansard roof, but on the Bourdon Street
façade the front wall has been raised by a storey to hide the
roof.
Much of the stabling in the centre of the mews was
rebuilt in the 1830's and 40's, chiefly by Thomas Cubitt
and John Newson, a builder who had an office and
workshops in Grosvenor Mews. (ref. 11) Buildings erected by
Cubitt in 1838–9 survive in an altered state at Nos. 42 and
44 Grosvenor Hill and Nos. 13, 15 and 15A Bourdon Place,
the latter an attractive two-storey range of former stabling
with living quarters above. No. 56 Grosvenor Hill and No.
21 Bourdon Street were built for Thomas Lilley, a
coachsmith, possibly by Cubitt's firm, in 1847–8. Lilley
had a small four-storey house, only one bay wide, built on
the Grosvenor Hill frontage with a workshop behind in
Bourdon Street, the latter recognizable by its very tall
ground storey with three normal brick-faced storeys
above. (ref. 12) The house in Grosvenor Hill to the west of No. 56
was also leased to Lilley, by Cubitt's direction, in 1844 but
it was drastically altered in 1903 to accommodate a
staircase serving a shirt and hosiery factory next door. (ref. 13)
Another early nineteenth-century survival is a pair of
coach-houses (now garages) with one storey of accommodation above at Nos. 31 and 33 Grosvenor Hill. They
were probably built by John Elger in 1838–40, when he
made substantial repairs and alterations to No. 73
Grosvenor Street, and were converted by Collcutt and
Hamp in 1928. (ref. 14) Other mews buildings on the north side of
Grosvenor Hill which formerly belonged to the houses on
the south side of Grosvenor Street have largely been
replaced by nondescript office blocks of considerable
height and bulk. At No. 9, however, the plain red-brick
exterior of a racquets court, which was built in 1909–10 by
White Allom and Company for the occupant of No. 59
Grosvenor Street, remains although windows have been
inserted. (ref. 15) The rear elevation of an extension to No. 69
Grosvenor Street also presents a lively front to Grosvenor
Hill. It was built by Dove Brothers to the designs of John
Johnson in 1907, (ref. 16) has three storeys and an attic above
ground-floor garages and is brick faced (now painted), with
a slightly projecting bay in the centre of the upper storeys
and large triple windows. At the west corner of Grosvenor
Hill and Broadbent Street is Mayfair Chambers (No. 7
Broadbent Street), a small utilitarian red-brick block of
'bachelor chambers', of four tall storeys, the topmost lit by
dormer windows, which was built by John Garlick in
1904–8 to the designs of R. G. Hammond. (ref. 17)
The most attractive group of buildings in the area is the
multi-gabled range on the south side of Bourdon Street at
Nos. 8–38 (even), all dating from approximately the last
decade of the nineteenth century (Plate 16c). No. 8 (with
No. 8A) is the former St. George's Shelter of 1889–90 (see
below). Nos. 10–20 and 32–38 are spacious sets of identical
red-brick stabling for the carriage-owning residents of
nearby streets, and were erected by the speculative builder
Jonathan Andrews of Mount Street, Nos. 10–14 in
1889–90, Nos. 32–38 in 1891–2 and Nos. 16–20 in
1899–1900. (ref. 18) By the time he built the last group Andrews
had his own architect, Horace J. Helsdon, who submitted
plans to the district surveyor for approval, (ref. 19) but whether
Helsdon was with Andrews from 1889 and was responsible
for the picturesque Queen Anne detailing is not known.
No. 10 was adapted for use with the neighbouring St.
George's Shelter in 1900 (ref. 20) and has a more overtly domestic
appearance. Otherwise only No. 20 has been greatly
altered, the remainder having survived conversion into
garages, flats or studios with little change to their
appearance, although at Nos. 36 and 38 the brickwork has
been painted white. No. 30, which sits between Andrews'
two ranges of stabling, was built in 1890–2 to the designs of
Thomas Henry Watson for the Metropolitan Horse
Shoeing Company and has two tall storeys faced with red
brick and terracotta and three free-standing gables capped
by triangular pediments. (ref. 21)
The latest building to be erected in the area, Grosvenor
Hill Court, is totally different in scale and appearance. A
tall, seven-storey slab clad in blue bricks with horizontal
bands of concrete sitting on a wide double-storey podium,
it incorporates flats, showrooms, offices and a parking
garage, and was built in 1964–8 to the designs of B. and N.
Westwood, Piet and Partners. (ref. 22)
St. Mary's Church, Bourdon Street (demolished).
A firm proposal to erect a church in the district of Grosvenor
Mews appears first to have been made in 1878, when
Canon Capel Cure, rector of St. George's, Hanover
Square, requested a site 'for a Mission Church for the
poor' from the Duke of Westminster. It was soon agreed
that this church should replace St. Mary's proprietary
chapel in Park Street, which the Duke intended to
demolish. A plot for the new building was earmarked
behind Bourdon House, at the corner of what was then
John Street and the short arm of Grosvenor Mews (now
respectively Bourdon Street and Grosvenor Hill), and the
ends of the old leases were bought by the Duke's trustees.
The site was to be held on a ninety-nine-year lease at a
peppercorn rent by representatives of the parish of St.
George's, Hanover Square, of which the new church was
intended to be a chapel of ease. The building was to be
designed by Arthur Blomfield, the much-favoured church
architect on the Grosvenor estate at this period, and
constructed by J. M. Macey and Son, whose contract was
worth £8,500. On 23 July 1880 the Duke laid the first stone
of the chancel, and eighteen months later, on 31 December
1881, the Bishop of London opened (but did not
consecrate) the completed church. Immediately afterwards, the Park Street chapel was demolished. (ref. 23)
St. Mary's was an unpretentious and small church,
designed to seat only three hundred. Nevertheless it was
thoroughly fitted out and cost £11,222 in all, the money
being entirely found by the Duke of Westminster. (ref. 24)
Blomfield's chosen style throughout was a strict Early
English Gothic. The chief features of the exterior, built of
red brick with dressings of Ham Hill stone, were a wellplaced south-west tower with pyramidal cap, and three
separate gables for the narrow south aisle (Plate 18a: see
also Plate 29a in vol. XXXIX). Within, the lofty nave had a
tall three-bay arcade surmounted by a clerestory and
pitch-pine roof, and was flanked by narrow passage aisles
(Plate 16b). The main shafts of the nave arcade were made
of Lascelles' patent concrete, a material of some novelty at
the time but one of which Blomfield had had experience,
fixed on to an iron frame. In the more ornate chancel many
of the shafts were of Purbeck marble. To the north were
steps down to vestries in the crypt, while on the south side
stood the organ chamber. The east end had triple lancets
over elaborate blank arcading inlaid with flat foliated
decoration. The central lancet had stained glass by Heaton,
Butler and Bayne. The chancel floor was of mosaic work by
Burke and Company and the font was executed by Thomas
Earp, but apart from these features there was little
decorative work. The organ, formerly in the Park Street
chapel, was adapted by Bryceson Brothers and Ellis, and
the pulpit may also have come from there. (ref. 25)
In 1885 some small alterations were made, and by this
time three more stained-glass windows had been installed,
probably in the south aisle. (ref. 26) But trouble soon started with
the external Ham Hill stonework. The Duke paid £251 in
1891 for repairs by Macey, but in 1906 the stonework was
said to be 'decaying all over the church'. Though
Blomfield was then dead, on the advice of his firm (Sir
Arthur Blomfield and Sons) repairs to the value of £1,050
were undertaken by J. Dorey and Company of Brentford
and paid for by the second Duke. In 1912 electricity was
installed and some further repairs undertaken. (ref. 27)
In 1940 the church became a temporary place of
worship for the Dutch Reformed congregation after the
destruction of its church in Austin Friars by bombing, (ref. 28)
but on the return of the Dutch to their new church in
Austin Friars in 1954, the lease of St. Mary's was
surrendered, the church was closed, and demolition took
place shortly afterwards. Its site now forms part of that of
Grosvenor Hill Court.
The Aeolian Hall (formerly Grosvenor Gallery)
The Aeolian Hall (formerly Grosvenor Gallery)
was built on land in two separate freehold ownerships. The
main part of the building, including the art gallery which
was later converted into a concert hall, was erected on the
Grosvenor estate, but the public entrance and main façade
stood in New Bond Street on land belonging to the
Corporation of the City of London.
The Grosvenor Gallery was founded in 1876–7 by Sir
Coutts Lindsay, baronet, himself an accomplished amateur artist. His decision to buy up the leases of some
stabling and workshops in Grosvenor Mews and erect
permanent art galleries there received not only the support
of friends in the art world but also the endorsement of the
Duke of Westminster, and Lindsay proceeded to acquire
some houses in New Bond Street, partly to provide a
public approach to his galleries and partly to overcome the
opposition of their owners on the grounds of loss of light
and air. (ref. 29) Lindsay chose as his architect the somewhat
mysterious William Thomas Sams. A young man with
little to his credit before the Grosvenor Gallery, his known
works afterwards amount only to one or two other
buildings in New Bond Street and a number of public
houses. The builders were G. H. and A. Bywater and
construction began in June 1876. (ref. 30) The building itself cost
£30,000, but estimates of the total outlay including the
acquisition of the site varied from £100,000 to £150,000. (ref. 31)
For the façade, which covers the site of three former
houses at Nos. 135–137 (consec.) New Bond Street, Sams
provided a restless, heavily ornamented, three-bay
Italianate elevation in Portland stone. The entrance to the
gallery was through a marble doorcase with coupled
columns which came from the demolished church of Santa
Lucia in Venice and was reputedly by Palladio. In 1925
this was replaced by the present dull entrance with Ionic
columns, (ref. 32) but above the ground floor Sams's façade has
survived with only minor alteration.
The large picture gallery at the rear of the site extended
north-south, and for its exterior Sams adopted a utilitarian
version of the South Kensington Rundbogenstil or roundarched style in multi-coloured brickwork. For the gallery
itself, which was at first-floor level, he used a tall, blind
arcade of red bricks with white glazed brick infilling.
Window openings were made within the arches and exit
doorways were added to the ground floor in 1903–4, when
the gallery was converted into a concert hall. The original
high roof of the gallery terminates in a gable-end with a
lunette in the centre on the south elevation.
Inside the entrance a vestibule with marble columns and
pilasters led to a grand staircase by which the complex of
galleries at first-floor level was approached. In the lavishly
appointed main, or west, gallery (Plate 16a) the walls were
divided into bays by richly gilded Ionic pilasters which had
been salvaged from the recently destroyed old Italian
Opera House in Paris, and the intervening spaces were
covered with red silk damask. The technique of lighting
the gallery by means of a longitudinal skylight in the centre
with coving on each side was also familiar from South
Kensington. The decoration on the coving depicting the
phases of the moon was by James McNeill Whistler, and
Lindsay himself was responsible for the panels between
the roof principals, where cherubs and cupids held
festoons of fruit and flowers. (ref. 33)
The inaugural exhibition, which opened on 1 May 1877,
included works by Millais, Leighton, Watts, Poynter,
Alma Tadema, Burne-Jones, Whistler, Holman Hunt,
Albert Moore and Walter Crane, and some 7,000 people
were reported to have paid the admission fee of one shilling
on the opening day. (ref. 34) Lindsay aimed to provide a bridge
between the artistic establishment centred on the Royal
Academy and the avant-garde painters of his day, but the
Grosvenor Gallery became particularly associated with the
latter. It was the sight of Whistler's painting, 'The Falling
Rocket', shown in the opening exhibition, that led Ruskin
to write that he 'never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two
hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's
face'—a remark which in turn led to Whistler's celebrated
but disastrous libel action. (ref. 35) And W. S. Gilbert's reference
in Patience (1881) to 'A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor
Gallery, Foot-in-the-grave young man' satirised the
gallery's identification with the Aesthetic Movement. But
in a retrospective notice written in 1912 The Times claimed
that the gallery had shown 'the most brilliant series of
exhibitions ever seen in London, so far as contemporary
art is concerned'. (ref. 36)
Financial problems, however, partly caused by domestic
difficulties, led Lindsay to attempt to place the gallery on a
more business-like footing by expanding some of the other
activities which he had established in the extensive
premises. These included a restaurant and buffet, a
circulating library and eventually a club and chambers.
Several alterations were made to accommodate these, some
at least to the designs of Fairfax B. Wade. These changes
produced a growing rift between Lindsay and his assistant
directors Charles Halle and Joseph Comyns Carr, and
when they resigned in 1887 and subsequently founded the
New Gallery in Regent Street they took with them some of
Lindsay's most important exhibitors. (ref. 37) Faced with waning
public support, Lindsay was forced to announce in 1890
that he could no longer sustain the yearly exhibitions and
that the galleries were being taken over by the Grosvenor
Club. (ref. 38)
One of the ancillary activities connected with the
Grosvenor Gallery is of particular importance in the
history of the electrical supply industry. In 1883 Lindsay
decided to light his galleries by electricity, which was
supplied from a small generating plant in an outbuilding,
and this step has been described by one authority as 'the
real cradle of the modern power station industry'. (ref. 39) Soon
he was receiving demands for electricity from neighbouring shopkeepers in New Bond Street and nearby residents,
and he therefore decided to build a larger generating
station at the gallery. A private company, Sir Coutts
Lindsay and Company, was formed and building began
late in 1884 under the direction of the engineers Mackenzie
and Brougham. A sub-basement was excavated under the
gallery to accommodate the machinery and an underground tunnel connected this with other buildings which
were erected on a plot on the south side of Bloomfield Place
(now No. 5), formerly occupied by workshops. Here the
boiler room and a chimney-shaft 110 feet high which acted
as a flue and ventilator were situated (Plate 16d). The new
station went into operation in 1885. (ref. 40)
The Grosvenor Gallery Station supplied customers
over a very large area by means of overhead cables which
radiated from a tower on top of the gallery and were carried
on iron poles fastened to housetops. Difficulties were
encountered in maintaining a constant supply, however,
and in January 1886 the company appointed the youthful
Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti as chief engineer. He installed
machinery of his own design and introduced a system
using transformers connected in parallel supplying
alternating current at high tension which has since been
almost universally adopted. The success of the station led
in 1887 to the formation of the London Electric Supply
Corporation Limited, which took over from Sir Coutts
Lindsay and Company. A new generating station was built
at Deptford, partly because of the numerous complaints
which had been made about the operations of the
Grosvenor Gallery Station in its cramped surroundings,
and in 1890 the latter was converted into a distributing
station. A fire occurred on the Bloomfield Place site in
November 1890 which resulted in the company's whole
supply being interrupted for three months, and the
opportunity was taken to replace the overhead transmission wires with underground cables. The premises in
Bloomfield Place were repaired and re-opened as a
distributing station in 1891. (ref. 41) (The present sub-station on
the site, which has a facing of dark bricks at ground-floor
level and concrete above, was erected in 1967–8 to the
designs of Mr. E. A. J. Hopkins of the Building and Civil
Works Branch of the London Electricity Board.)
Figure 19:
Grosvenor Gallery, plan in 1889
In 1903 the whole of the Grosvenor Gallery building
was taken over by the Orchestrelle Company of New York
(later the Aeolian Company), manufacturers of musical
instruments, in particular the recently invented mechanical piano-player known as the pianola. (ref. 42) The premises
were altered for them by Walter Cave. He converted the
ground floor into one large showroom which was panelled
in oak with verde-antique marble Ionic columns and
pilasters. The main staircase was also panelled, and
furnished with bronze handrails. The rest of the premises
was substantially remodelled, primarily to provide showrooms and offices, and the main picture gallery was
converted into a concert hall. Here most of Sams's work
was stripped away. The lower parts of the walls were
panelled with mahogany and the upper parts divided into
bays by broad Ionic pilasters. Between these, windows
were made in the west wall with corresponding shell niches
opposite. A stage and huge organ case of oak were provided
at the south end, and the original skylights were hidden by
a panelled ceiling of cradle form. Cave was honorary
secretary of the Art-Workers' Guild and several fellow
members worked under him on the building including
J. E. Knox for woodcarving, W. S. Frith for ornamental
plasterwork and W. Bainbridge Reynolds for brasswork.
The latter was presumably responsible for a series of
highly original light fittings which have since been
removed. The builders were James Simpson and Sons.
The inaugural recital in the Aeolian Hall, as the new
concert hall was named, took place on 19 January 1904. (ref. 43)
Several alterations were made subsequently, often by
Cave himself, including the erection of a gallery in the
concert hall (ref. 44) and eventually much of the ground floor was
divided into separate shops. During the war of 1939–45 the
British Broadcasting Corporation took over the Aeolian
Hall, chiefly for recording concerts and recitals. When they
gave up the premises in 1975 much of Cave's work in the
concert hall and its approaches was still intact, although
many of the fittings had been replaced and some of the
decorative features were covered up. At the time of writing
(1978) the hall is still empty and its future is uncertain.
St. George's Baths and Wash Houses (demolished).
In 1852 the Vestry of St. George's, Hanover Square,
adopted the Act passed in 1846 to Encourage the
Establishment of Public Baths and Wash Houses.
Commissioners were appointed to carry out the Act,
including the Marquess of Westminster, who had moved
its adoption, and in Mayfair a suitable site was found in
Davies Street consisting of a former coach-builder's house
with extensive premises at the rear fronting on to
Grosvenor Mews. The commissioners had to pay the
existing lessees a rent of £380, and in 1853–4 the house was
altered and new baths and wash houses were built behind
to the designs of the Vestry's engineer, P. Pritchard Baly,
at a cost of some £12,000. The builder was George Myers
of Lambeth. (ref. 45) The four-storey house in Davies Street was
given a crisp Italianate façade with a rusticated triplearched ground storey containing the main entrance to the
baths. The elevation to Grosvenor Mews was of stock
brick and the whole building was dominated by a massive
chimney-shaft.
In 1881, the previous lease having expired, the Duke of
Westminster granted a new twenty-three-year lease at a
rent of £200 (which was acknowledged to be below market
value) and added a piece of ground to the south on which
an extension to the baths was built. During negotiations
for a new lease in 1902, however, the town clerk of the
newly formed Westminster City Council stated that a
'heavy annual loss' prevented the Council from paying the
enhanced rent which the Grosvenor Board now thought
the site demanded, and, after a short extension at the
existing rent, the baths were closed in 1910, not without
protest, and demolished for the building of the block of
flats called The Manor (see page 74). (ref. 46)
St. George's Buildings
St. George's Buildings, erected in 1853, was the first
of many blocks of workmen's dwellings to be built on the
Grosvenors' London estates. It stands on an awkwardly
shaped island site between Bourdon Street and Bourdon
Place which the Estate Board had agreed to let to the
builder John Newson in 1849 for the erection of stables or
workshops. In December of that year, however, the St.
George's Parochial Association (later known as the St.
George's Workmen's Model Dwellings Association) was
founded under the presidency of the Marquess of
Westminster to provide artisans' dwellings in the parish of
St. George's, Hanover Square, and in 1852 Newson made
over his interest in the plot to the Parochial Association as
the site for its first venture. Newson himself undertook the
construction at a cost of £3,100 including his own profit
and the plan was provided by Henry Roberts, who had
designed the important prototypical block of model
dwellings in Streatham Street, Bloomsbury. St. George's
Buildings provided eight sets of two-roomed dwellings on
each of four floors and was based on Roberts's favoured
plan of one central staircase giving on to open galleries
from which the flats were entered. (ref. 47) A fifth storey was
added in 1876 (A. Stoner, builder). (ref. 48)
St. George's Buildings is a successful small-scale
tenement block with robust brick elevations on three sides
dressed with brick quoins at the corners and a brick cornice
at the original roof level and galleries with simple but
attractive ironwork on the south side (Plate 30a in vol.
XXXIX). Necessary modernisation in recent years, however,
has led to the making of a number of additional window
openings.
Bloomfield Flats
Bloomfield Flats (formerly Buildings), a small block
of artisans' dwellings at the south corner of Bloomfield
Place and Bourdon Street (Plate 16d), were erected by the
builder John Newson on his own initiative shortly after he
had completed St. George's Buildings. He acquired the
site in 1854 but was not granted a lease until 1858 and may
not have completed the building until then. The design is
similar to that of St. George's Buildings but here the open
galleries are arranged on one side of a tiny courtyard which
is approached from Bloomfield Place through an arched
entrance way. The building, which provided for twentyeight families, cost £3,100 and the average rents of about
4s. 6d. per week were designed to give Newson a return of
slightly over 5 per cent per annum on this sum after
deducting his costs, including the ground rent of £55. This
level of profitability was an important factor in encouraging the promotion of model dwellings and Newson's
enterprise in erecting this and other small blocks elsewhere
was used as propaganda for the working-class dwellings
movement. (ref. 49) Bloomfield was Newson's wife's maiden
name. (ref. 50)
Grosvenor Buildings
Grosvenor Buildings, the third block of model
dwellings to be erected in the area, was built in 1868–9 for
the St. George's Parochial Association, and was extended
to the west in 1891–2. Robert Henry Burden was the
architect and A. Stoner the builder for both parts. The first
plot was provided on the initiative of the second Marquess
of Westminster who decreed that it should be offered to the
Association when the leases of the workshops which
previously stood on the site expired in 1868. (ref. 51)
Burden's austere five-storeyed block is faced with grey
bricks relieved by irregular bands of red brickwork (Plate
30b in vol. XXXIX). The entrance is set within a tall arch on
the south side and gives access to a rather cramped staircase
with open landings, but there are no external galleries of
the kind found in the earlier blocks.
St. George's Institute and Bourdon Buildings
St. George's Institute and Bourdon Buildings
(demolished) stood on the eastern part of the site now
occupied by Grosvenor Hill Court. In 1877 the rector of
St. George's, Hanover Square, Canon Capel Cure, had
asked for a site for 'a Coffee house and for a Mission house'
in Grosvenor Mews and the Duke was able to promise a
site at a peppercorn rent when some of the leases there
expired in 1882. A parochial committee was established to
raise subscriptions, and appointed Joseph Peacock as
architect. Part of the site was, at the request of the St.
George's Workmen's Model Dwellings Association, used
for a small block of model dwellings for which Peacock also
provided the designs. The buildings, which were faced
with red brick and artificial stone dressings, included a
dispensary and were erected in 1883–4 by Perry and
Company of Bow at a total cost of £17,000. The institute,
facing Grosvenor Hill, had three storeys above a basement,
the dispensary on an adjoining site to the east had four
storeys, and the model dwellings which occupied the
southern part of the site with an elevation to Bourdon
Street were five storeys high, these complex relationships
in height being partly offset by the slope of the ground.
Besides a large hall, the institute had a gymnasium,
parochial kitchen, library, boys' club, working-men's club
and small flats for parish workers. The dispensary closed in
1941 and the institute in 1962, shortly after which all three
buildings were demolished. (ref. 52)
Nos. 8 and 8a Bourdon Street (formerly St. George's
Shelter).
This pleasant red-brick building with a picturesquely irregular outline was erected in 1889–90 as a refuge
for fallen women. The architect was Stephen Salter, the
contractors were Higgs and Hill, and the cost amounted to
some £6,500. The shelter had originally been established
in some nearby stabling in 1885 by the twentieth Baron
Clinton, but had moved in the same year to a public house
on the site of the present building which the Duke of
Westminster had recently closed. The Duchess of
Westminster laid the foundation stone of the new building
in March 1889 and it was opened by the Bishop of
Marlborough early in 1890. Later additions include an
upper-storey projection with a pyramidal roof in one of the
angles of the frontage, of 1892, and a double-storey porch,
of 1897, the latter designed by Harry Wilson of Sedding
and Wilson. The building incorporated a small chapel. (ref. 53)