CHAPTER X
Green Street Area
The development of Green Street extended over some
thirty-five years and was not substantially completed until
the mid 1760's. The slump in the volume of building in
London which lasted from the late 1730's to the late 1740's
was very much in evidence here, and the intermittent
progress was marked by several unusual features.
Green Street is not shown on Mackay's map of 1723 of
the intended layout of the estate, but its course had been
decided upon by 1727, (ref. 1) its position closer to North Row
than to Upper Brook Street being no doubt determined by
the need to provide the houses on the north side of the
latter street with plots deep enough for the formation of a
mews at their rear (now Lees Place). This modification of
the original plan for the estate was probably facilitated by
the fact that the estate surveyor himself, Thomas Barlow,
and the Grosvenors' agent, Robert Andrews, had by a
building agreement of March 1725 taken the large area
bounded by North Row, North Audley Street, Upper
Brook Street and Park Street, for the successful layout of
which an extra east-west street was clearly required. Three
years later all of the ground on both sides of Green Street
between North Audley Street and Park Street was leased to
Barlow and Andrews jointly by Sir Richard Grosvenor. (ref. 2)
The street is almost certainly named after John Green,
the builder, who erected a house at the south corner with
North Audley Street (ref. 3) and in 1733 was granted a lease of a
large plot adjoining, where he built another house for his
own occupation. (ref. 4) Green lived here until his death in 1737,
when he fell into a well which he was inspecting at another
house he had built, No. 43 Upper Grosvenor Street. In a
notice of his death The Weekly Miscellany described him as
'a very wealthy Builder'. (ref. 5) (fn. a)
In 1781 a second house was built within the curtilage of
Green's house, (ref. 6) which had evidently not occupied the
whole frontage of the plot. This and other examples of infilling nearby (ref. 7) indicate that the south side of the eastern
part of Green Street did not originally present the
unbroken 'terrace' frontage generally prevalent elsewhere,
and that the kind of arrangement at the still surviving Nos.
60 and 61, where the two houses were at first separated by a
courtyard, was not unique. Some 230 feet of ground in this
part of the street were originally occupied by only four
houses, the first occupants of all of which were building
tradesmen, namely John Green, Roger Morris, carpenter,
James Richards, carver, and Robert Umpleby, carpenter;
and it seems likely that the intervening spaces were
occupied by their building yards. In its early years Green
Street seems, indeed, to have been a very popular place of
residence for builders. (fn. b)
On the north side a more conventional terrace of
narrow-fronted houses was erected over several years, but
development on both sides was slow and uneven and by the
1740's had still not reached Park Street. By that time the
sharp downturn in the London building industry was
becoming very apparent here, as can be seen in the
unfinished state of the street shown on Rocque's map of
1746 (Plate 2 in vol. XXXIX). At the south-east corner of
Green Street and Park Street the plot now occupied by
Nos. 51–54 Green Street had been let to Benjamin
Timbrell in 1739, (ref. 9) but it was not until 1762–3 that the
ground was built on by Timbrell's son, William, and John
Spencer, who erected St. Mary's Chapel and a single house
there. (ref. 10)
To the west of Park Street some building had taken
place in the 1730's, but it was not of the normal speculative
kind. In 1735–6 Roger Morris, then living in his large
house (now part of Hampden House) in Green Street, had
obtained possession of the ground bounded by Green
Street, Park Street, Wood's Mews and Park Lane. (ref. 11) He
had recently been appointed master carpenter to the Board
of Ordnance, (ref. 12) and his principal purpose in taking this
ground was evidently to build stables for the Second
Troop of Horse Guards (the Second Life Guards). These
buildings, which included a riding house, had a long
frontage to Wood's Mews and were eventually surrounded
by houses on the other three sides. Built in 1738, the
stables were ranged around a central courtyard with access
from Park Street through an arched passageway. (ref. 13)
The stables remained in the possession of the Life
Guards until c. 1784, (ref. 7) when the premises were taken over
by Murdoch Mackenzie of St. Marylebone, a coachmaker,
who used them as a place to manufacture, display and sell
carriages which he called a rhedarium. 'Small stables …
for gentlemen's horses to stand at livery' were also
provided, and an advertisement in 1787 extolled the
virtues of two stallions kept there for breeding purposes. (ref. 14)
For a short period after 1803 part of the premises was used
by Frederick Albert Winsor for his early experiments in
the manufacture of gas for lighting. (ref. 15) After Mackenzie's
death in c. 1810 (ref. 16) the stabling was divided between several
tenants. The buildings survived with modification and
rebuildings until 1914–15 when the last of them were
cleared away for the laying out of Green Street garden
which now occupies most of the site.
After 1739 no further building took place anywhere in
Green Street until the 1750's, the prevailing depression in
the London building trades being no doubt felt with
particular severity in such places as this, then on the
extreme edge of the metropolitan built-up area. Even so
successful a builder as Roger Morris was reduced to using
some of his land fronting Green Street as a 'dung place' for
the Guards' stables. (ref. 17) This site was not developed until
1785, when Murdoch Mackenzie built himself a house
there, with an arched passage leading to his rhedarium at
the rear. (ref. 18) The rest of Morris's undeveloped land seems to
have been divided up into rectangular cultivated plots
surrounded by a brick wall, somewhat in the manner of
present-day allotments. (ref. 19)
From 1755 onwards newly completed houses on the
south side of Green Street are again recorded in the
ratebooks, but many gaps still remained. On the north side
building had not even reached Park Street when the slump
had begun. Here no building leases were granted between
1735 and 1751, when Robert Andrews (who had by then
obtained sole leasehold title to the undeveloped part of the
large parcel of land which he and Thomas Barlow had
taken jointly in 1725) sub-let the remaining frontage as far
as Park Street. (ref. 20) Most of this ground was let to John
Willan, a stable-keeper, who built stabling around a yard
called North Row Mews on Horwood's map of 1794 (now
the site of the modern Red Place). In 1752 the remaining
ground, including the east side of Park Street between
Green Street and North Row, was made over by Willan to
Joseph Kell of St. Giles in the Fields, carpenter, (ref. 21) and
during the next decade nine small houses—two facing
Green Street and seven in Park Street—were built here. (ref. 22)
To the west of Park Street the principal undertaker on
the north side was John Spencer, carpenter, who by two
building agreements of 1750 and 1757 contracted to
develop the rectangular area bounded by North Row, Park
Street, Green Street and Park Lane. (ref. 23) Spencer was an
important builder on the estate during the third quarter of
the eighteenth century though none of his work there now
survives. From 1756 until 1765 he lived in a house built by
himself at the north-west corner of Green Street and Park
Street (on the site of the present No. 25 Green Street)
before moving to the still-surviving No. 60 Green Street. (ref. 7)
In 1771 he was declared bankrupt. (ref. 24)
By the 1760's the development of Green Street was
largely complete, although some later in-filling of vacant
plots took place. Few habitués of the fashionable Mayfair
world of the eighteenth century were attracted hither,
though Roger Morris's large house (now No. 61) and the
house to the east of it built by John Green both had titled
residents. In 1790 some twenty houses were occupied by
tradesmen, eight of them in the building and allied trades,
who were continuing the tradition established when the
street was first developed. There were also a banker and an
'operator to their Majesties for the hands and feet', as well
as three out-servants who waited on noble households
nearby. (ref. 25)
During the 1820's, when the first leases were falling in,
some fifteen houses were evidently rebuilt or substantially
refurbished, principally on the north side between North
Audley Street and Park Street, and on the south side to the
west of Park Street. (ref. 26) Edward Lapidge, the architect, was
involved in the redevelopment of the north side and
occupied one house from 1812 until 1825 before moving to
another further along the the street until 1831. (ref. 27) Daniel
Robertson, who exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1827
from Lapidge's former address (where the house had
perhaps been rebuilt by then), was almost certainly the
same Daniel Robertson who, with Alexander Robertson,
had entered into an abortive scheme for the development
of Belgravia in 1813. (ref. 28) Another 'architect' and exhibitor at
the Academy was Samuel Erlam, who occupied two
different houses on the north side during this period and
was certainly engaged in building work in the street: from
1814 to 1816 his address was one house away from the east
corner with Park Street, and from 1823 to 1826 it was a few
doors further east. (ref. 29) In the latter year he moved to a new
house built by himself at the south corner of Park Street
and Lees Place (now demolished) which he used as an
office, his place of residence being then at Turnham
Green. (ref. 30)
Another notable builder working in Green Street in the
1820's was John Elger, who was operating from an address
in South Street. He rebuilt two—possibly three—houses
on the north side approximately on the site of the modern
Red Place (see Plate 23c in vol. XXXIX), and also built a large
house on a site formerly occupied by two at the north-east
corner of Green Street and Norfolk (now Dunraven)
Street in 1826–8. (ref. 31) This house, which had detached coachhouses nearby and was highly rated, was first occupied,
from 1828 to 1838, by Lady East, the widow of Sir Gilbert
East, baronet, latterly with her second husband, John
Westenra. (ref. 32) It was demolished in 1896 for the building of
the present No. 32 Green Street.
It was perhaps this partial renewal of the original fabric
which from the 1830's attracted rather more titled
residents to Green Street, some of whom are listed below.
But the best-known resident was the Reverend Sydney
Smith, the raconteur and wit, who in 1839 bought No. 56
(on the site of the present No. 59), and was soon describing
it as 'the essence of all that is comfortable'. A drawing
made shortly before the house was demolished shows it to
have been a modest Georgian house of three main storeys,
three windows wide, with iron balconies and a heavy Ionic
porch. It had probably been built in c. 1765 to fill in a
vacant plot or courtyard between two existing houses.
Smith died here in February 1845. (ref. 33)
Thomas Willement (1786–1871), the writer on heraldry
and artist in stained glass who provided windows for
Pugin, Salvin and Butterfield among others, lived in Green
Street for almost the whole of his life. His premises were at
No. 25 (approximately on the site of the modern No. 27)
and consisted of a large house with workshops at the rear
which were approached through passageways from Green
Street and North Row. Another Thomas Willement,
presumably his father, who was described as a coach and
house painter, had lived there from c. 1786 and in 1811
claimed that he had spent £2,000 in rebuilding the greater
part of the premises. His son remained here until 1866
when he retired to Davington Priory, Kent, a country
house which he had restored and where he died in 1871. (ref. 34)
His successor in Green Street was Henry Hughes, also an
artist in stained glass. (ref. 35)
In 1876 the Grosvenor Board refused to renew the lease
of a house on the south side of Green Street which was due
to expire in 1885 (ref. 36) and it is clear that plans for extensive
rebuilding were already being tentatively formulated. In
1880 the Duke of Westminster approved the rebuilding of
the west end of the street 'in small private houses as the
leases expire' (ref. 37) and in 1882–3 occupants of shops were told
that shops would not be allowed after the current leases
had expired. (ref. 38) Rebuilding began at the south-east corner
with Park Street, where St. Mary's Chapel was demolished
in 1882, (ref. 39) and continued intermittently for some forty
years. During this period the hitherto predominantly
stock-brick eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
house fronts which had hitherto prevailed were replaced
by façades of red brick with terracotta or stone dressings,
relieved only by the occasional house faced completely in
stone. Now only Hampden House at Nos. 60 and 61 Green
Street survives as a reminder of the appearance of the
street architecture before 1880, although even here the
bricks have a reddish hue, originally no doubt an exception
to the norm. If the universality of Georgian brick façades
provided the kind of insipid vistas which the Victorians so
much disliked, the reinterpreted free classical forms
gathered under the labels of Queen Anne or Domestic
Revival which were hung on the four-storey façades of the
new houses under their multi-gabled roof lines hardly
escape here from an equally pervasive overall monotony.
The extent of the transformation was more remarkable
than the manner of it.
One feature of the reconstruction of the area was of some
importance for future Estate policy. This was the creation
of a large private garden to be shared communally by the
residents of the houses, which backed on to it (Plate 50c: see
also Plate 47b in vol. XXXIX). Green Street garden was laid
out in 1914–15 to the designs of Edmund Wimperis, the
estate surveyor, though the idea had been first suggested
by his predecessor, Eustace Balfour, in 1910. (ref. 40) It took the
place of the now tumbledown stables and garages which,
with much rebuilding and alteration, were the remnants of
the Guards' stables built by Roger Morris in 1738. The
cost of the work, paid for by the Estate, amounted to some
£1,500, but Wimperis considered this money to have been
well spent, for in 1914 he claimed 'that the undertaking to
form the garden has resulted in largely increased ground
rents being obtained [for the adjacent building plots,
while at the same time greatly improving the character of
this part of the Grosvenor Estate'. (ref. 41) The annual cost of the
upkeep of the garden was shared by the tenants of the
houses around it, and the experiment was soon repeated in
the south-east corner of the estate when the South Street
garden was formed.
One effect of the rebuildings in Green Street was to
drive out the remaining vestiges of commerce, and until
the war of 1939–45 most of the houses remained in singlefamily private occupation, despite the occasional incursions of doctors and dentists. Since the war, however,
many houses have been converted into flats and others
adapted for office use.
Occupants of demolished houses in Green Street not already
mentioned include: Edward Jerningham, poet and dramatist,
1786–1812. 2nd Baron Hartland, 1819. William St. Quintin,
owner of the St. Quintin estate in North Kensington, 1825–35.
Dow. Duchess of Newcastle, wid. of 3rd Duke, 1829–34. 2nd
Viscount Frankfort, 1831–41. Gen. Sir William Lumley, son of
4th Earl of Scarbrough, 1833–50. Rev. Edward Thomas Daniell,
traveller, 1836–42. Sir Thomas Digby Aubrey, 7th bt., barrister,
1841–56. Lewis William Buck, M.P., 1841–58. Gen. Sir Howard
Douglas, 1851–61. Benjamin Travers, pioneer in eye surgery,
1853–8. George Ward Hunt, M.P., later Chancellor of the
Exchequer, 1859. John Timbs, writer and publisher, 1861–3. 3rd
Earl of Romney, 1866–8. 12th Earl of Westmorland, 1868–70.
Norman de L'Aigle Grosvenor, grandson of 1st Marquess of
Westminster, 1883–92. Sir George Osborne Morgan, bt., M.P.,
Q.C., 1885–95. 6th Earl of Bessborough, 1888–95. 5th Earl of
Orford, 1896.