Park Street: East Side
No. 2
No. 2 see page 334.
Nos. 8–12 (even)
Nos. 8–12 (even) see page 334.
Nos. 14–22 (even)
Nos. 14–22 (even) see page 334.
Nos. 34–42 (even)
Nos. 34–42 (even) see page 324.
Nos. 44–50 (even) Park Street and Nos. 37 and 38 Upper Grosvenor Street
Nos. 44–50 (even) Park Street and Nos. 37 and 38
Upper Grosvenor Street (Plates 63c, 63d, 63e, 63f, 75d: see also
Plate 46a in vol. XXXIX). These houses were built in
1911–12 to designs by Detmar Blow and his French
partner Fernand Billerey, the latter being their principal
progenitor. This, at any rate, was the opinion of Professor
H. S. Goodhart-Rendel, who in reference some years later
to this and other examples of their 'French architecture in
London, architecture of the highest order, and of the kind
which leads an Englishman to despair', thought that 'the
easy certainty with which Mr. Billerey has grouped the
houses in Park Street' was the product 'not [of] a lifetime,
but [of] generations of inherited experience'. (ref. 13)
In the years between 1906 and 1911 the proposed
redevelopment of this site was a source of anxious concern
to the Estate because this section of Park Street,
overlooking the garden of Grosvenor House and visible
from Hyde Park, was much more prominent than it is now.
The general intention was to treat the seven houses as one
architectural unit on the lines of Nash's terraces in
Regent's Park, but to improve on early nineteenth-century
precedent by using 'fine materials instead of stucco'. (ref. 14) The
gestation of the design was not, however, as effortless or
simple as Goodhart-Rendel thought; the plans and
elevations underwent almost continuous revision as the
architects strove to reconcile monumental architecture
with the requirements of individual houses. The internal
layout was in fact to some extent sacrificed to a grand
external effect, windows being in several cases placed in the
corners of rooms so as not to disturb the rhythm of the
façade, as a prospective occupant was later to complain. (ref. 15)
Uniform redevelopment of the site was proposed in the
first place by Eustace Balfour, the estate surveyor. In
March 1906 Mr. Saloman, the occupier of No. 37 Upper
Grosvenor Street, was told that the lease of his house could
not be renewed because 'the adjoining houses in Park
Street must be rebuilt as part of one scheme for which
Colonel Balfour states there must be one design …. The
site is a very fine one, overlooking the garden of Grosvenor
House into the Park, and the Duke would have to be
specially consulted. There must be one elevation, under
one architect and one builder for the whole.' (ref. 16) The
redevelopment was planned to take place in 1910 and
William Willett of Sloane Square agreed to take the
building contract. (ref. 17) In June 1908 Balfour produced a
pencil elevation for a stone front but the Duke did not like
it and 'stated that he wanted a design prepared by Mr.
Detmar Blow', who had recently been Sir Cuthbert
Quilter's architect at No. 28 South Street. (ref. 18) Blow was
invited to attend the Board and was told what was required
for the site: namely moderate-sized houses with individual
plans to suit prospective tenants (some of them occupiers
of the existing houses) and a uniform frontage. After
further negotiations with Willetts, Blow was appointed
architect and in July 1910 produced a perspective drawing
for submission to the Duke. Wimperis, who by that time
had succeeded Balfour as surveyor to the estate, thought
the roof line too monotonous and suggested that it should
be broken up by gables but the Duke approved the
elevation without change. (ref. 19) In November, however, Blow
substituted a much grander elevation 'on different lines',
evidently the work of himself and his partner Fernand
Billerey. This did not meet with the unqualified approval
of Wimperis and the Board; when the matter came up for
discussion in May 1911 Blow agreed to alter the porches
and also to reduce the recession of the ground-floor
windows, the depth of which, it was feared, might deter
prospective occupants. The revised elevation was approved by the Duke in the same month and work began
immediately. (ref. 20)
Figure 56:
Nos. 44–50 (even) Park Street and Nos. 37 and 38 Upper Grosvenor Street, ground-floor plans
The façade is a fine piece of Beaux-Arts classicism,
fifteen bays wide and four storeys high. The composition is
tied together by a prominent modillion cornice at attic
level, the balustrades below the first-floor windows and
along the parapet, and the French-style channelling of the
Portland stone masonry. The centrepiece is an attached
Ionic portico with fluted columns stretched over three
storeys. Perhaps because it is solidly executed in stone and
because it is so carefully academic, the block lacks the
irresistible and shameless theatricality of Nash's stucco
terraces and looks more like a public building transplanted
from Paris than a group of houses in Mayfair. Such
magnificence seems almost incongruous now that the
original setting has been lost and the houses face the
monotonous back of new Grosvenor House instead of the
garden of its more aristocratic predecessor.
The interiors are finely detailed and vary between
French 'Louis XVI' and 'early Georgian', perhaps to suit
the taste of individual lessees (Plate 63d, 63e, 63f). The joinery
in particular is of high quality. Several rooms contain
imported marble chimneypieces. Those in the first-floor
rooms at No. 50 were once the property of Warren
Hastings and came from Somerset House, Park Lane, in
1915 (ref. 21) (Plate 75d). They are decent examples of later
eighteenth-century taste; one is decorated with marble
inlay, the other with conventional carving in low relief.
Some old chimneypieces may have been re-used from the
former houses on the site, for in 1909 Balfour had reported
that one chimneypiece in No. 37 and one in No. 38 Upper
Grosvenor Street were 'of special value' and that others
were 'quite nice'. (ref. 22) At No. 46 Park Street minor alterations
were made for Lionel Nathan de Rothschild by W. H.
Romaine-Walker in 1913. (ref. 23)
Nos. 58 and 60 Park Street
Nos. 58 and 60 Park Street were both built in 1826–7
on ground hitherto occupied by the stables and outbuildings of No. 12 Upper Grosvenor Street. (ref. 24) The developer
was Sir Rufane Donkin, lessee of No. 12 from 1825, (ref. 25) but
neither his builder nor architect is known. The houses are
similar but not identical in appearance. Both have four
main storeys (No. 60 is slightly lower) and plain brick
fronts with stuccoed ground storeys typical of the 1820's.
No. 60 has a Delian Doric porch and No. 58 formerly had a
verandah at first-floor level. (ref. 26) The first occupant of the
latter in 1827 was Sir Rufane Donkin himself. (ref. 27)
No. 62
No. 62 see page 225.
No. 64
No. 64 (Plate 58a, 58b).
The small figure of a polar bear in
the pediment above the entrance to this 1920's neoGeorgian house commemorates an eighteenth-century
tavern called the White Bear which stood here for more
than a hundred and fifty years until its demolition in
1917. (ref. 28) Built under a sub-lease of 1728 to the carpenter and
joiner Richard Teage, (ref. 29) who was himself the first occupant
in 1729, the original house was the first to be erected in
Park Street. (ref. 4) But it was not, it seems, a tavern from the
beginning and first appears in the licensed victuallers'
registers as the Bear in 1736, with Teage as the licensee.
The name White Bear is first recorded in 1742. (ref. 30)
Left unmolested during the first Duke's purge of public
houses in the 1870's and 80's, and never wholly rebuilt, the
White Bear survived into the twentieth century as a
homely brick building with a hipped roof, more typical,
perhaps, of Shoreditch than of the heart of Mayfair. On the
Culross Street side the original eighteenth-century front
remained, above the ground storey, but the Park Street
front had been rebuilt, probably in the early nineteenth
century. It was finally suppressed after the lease expired in
1915, because the Estate had given an undertaking to this
effect to Higgs and Hill, builders of the expensive Nos.
37–43 on the opposite side of Park Street. (ref. 31)
After demolition nothing was done until 1925 when a
Mr. Stanley Cousins of Little Fishery, Maidenhead,
contracted with the Estate to build a house here for his own
occupation, the site being extended to include that of the
first adjoining house in Culross Street. (ref. 32) Designed by
Wimperis, Simpson and Guthrie, (fn. a) and built by Foxley
and Company, the house was completed in 1926.
Externally it has something of the character of a small
English manor house of the late seventeenth century with a
symmetrical front and a graceful scroll pediment over the
door. Small red and blue facing bricks are used for both
street fronts and pantiles for the pitched roof. Inside, the
two principal rooms on the ground floor have carved
wooden chimneypieces and modillion cornices. The
wooden staircase is in the seventeenth-century style with
three balusters to a tread. Originally the house had no
basement. (ref. 34)
Cousins lived here for only a very short time and from
1928 until 1936 the house was occupied by the Hon. John
Dewar, of Dewar's whisky, who succeeded his father as
second Baron Forteviot in 1929. (ref. 35)
Nos. 66–78 (even)
Nos. 66–78 (even) were originally built under leases of
1729 to John Barnes, bricklayer, or his nominees (ref. 36) and,
with the exception of Nos. 66 and 68 (originally one house
but reconstructed in 1845–6 as two, (ref. 4) with stuccoed
elevations), they are among the more extensive early
eighteenth-century survivals on the estate and retain
brown-brick fronts with red-brick gauged arches and
window trim (Plate 59: see also Plate 8b in vol. XXXIX). No.
72 preserves its original external appearance to a large
degree, having a carved wooden doorcase with scrolly
brackets supporting a prominent cornice and a square
tablet in the entablature for the street number (Plate 59a),
similar to early eighteenth-century doorcases in Meard
Street, Soho, and at No. 44 Old Gloucester Street,
Holborn. Nos. 74 and 76 remain three storeyed but the
other houses have additional square fourth storeys. No. 74
has mid nineteenth-century stucco window architraves,
quoins and rusticated ground storey, while Nos. 66, 68, 74,
76 and 78 have early nineteenth-century iron balconies of
varying designs. Nos. 70, 72 and 74 still contain
remarkably complete early eighteenth-century interiors,
including dog-leg staircases with simple turned balusters
and fully panelled rooms at ground- and first-floor levels
(Plate 59b, 59c). The plans are of the usual early eighteenthcentury London pattern with a narrow entrance passage
and staircase on the left, two rooms, one behind the other,
on the right, and a full-height closet wing with corner
chimneypieces at the rear.
Some occupants carried out improvements and alterations later in the eighteenth century. No. 70, for
instance, underwent some changes during the occupancy
of Bernard ('Bunny') Granville in the middle of the
century. In 1750 his sister, Mrs. Delany, advised him that
paper 'would look very handsome in your hall, give it a
finished look—and it is cheaper than painting'. In May
1753 she noted 'I had yesterday a letter from my brother.
He tells me he has begun building one good room to his
house; he could not do more now without unfurnishing it
and taking another house for the winter….' (ref. 37) Granville
was a man of taste who also 'improved' his country house,
Calwich Abbey in Staffordshire, (ref. 38) but no evidence of any
embellishment made by him survives now in his house in
Park Street.<Granville moved to [No. 23] Holles Street in December 1752 or January 1753, and Mrs Delany's reference to his building a good room refers to Holles Street not Park Street.>
In the nineteenth century the houses passed gradually
out of private occupation into commercial use. No. 78, for
instance, was for many years occupied jointly with the
adjoining No. 47 Upper Brook Street by a bookseller and
warehouseman, but by the 1890's it had been separated
again and was being used by the District Messengers'
Company. Despite complaints from neighbours about the
'call bell and boys', the Grosvenor Board tolerated them
because 'the Duke uses the District Messengers very
largely, and it is thought that they are a convenience to the
residents of the estate'. (ref. 39) While the Board was aware
therefore of the usefulness of this pocket of commercial
activity, it was also concerned at the run-down appearance
of the area and soon after the accession of the second Duke
proposals were conceived for redeveloping the whole range
together with other neighbouring houses in Upper Brook
Street and Culross Street. A rebuilding contract was
drawn up with Matthews, Rogers and Company, but soon
after the outbreak of war in 1914 it was put into abeyance
and was not revived after the return of peace. (ref. 40) So the
houses narrowly escaped rebuilding, and in the different
social conditions of the post-war period they were judged
capable of conversion into highly desirable Georgian
residences. At various dates in the 1920's they were
restored and embellished and are still in individual private
occupation.
No. 80
No. 80 see page 204.
No. 82
No. 82 see page 204.
Nos. 84–90 (even).
These four houses, which stand on
ground first occupied by coach-houses, stables and a yard, (ref. 41)
were erected in about 1824–5, (ref. 4) probably by Samuel Erlam
of Green Street, architect and builder. He originally built
five houses and retained an interest in two of them, but the
most northerly one was demolished in 1887 in order to
widen the entry into Lees Place. (ref. 42) They were all more or
less uniform brick buildings of four storeys above the
pavement, with stuccoed ground floors (Plate 63a). Some
at least were at first used as shops, but in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries alterations and additions
were made to all the houses as the tone of Park Street
improved, to the point where some of the householders
could claim that they had 'raised them from the level of
common lodging houses to private residences'. (ref. 43) The
most-altered house in the row is No. 90, which was much
rebuilt following bomb damage close by at No. 94.
No. 96
No. 96, a four-storey block of flats in a vaguely neoGeorgian idiom, was erected in 1963–4 to the designs of
Wills and Kaula to replace two houses (one of them the
Hertford Arms) which had been bombed during the war of
1939–45. (ref. 44)
Nos. 98–104A (even)
Nos. 98–104A (even) are the survivors of a group of
seven red-brick houses with Portland-stone dressings built
by William Cubitt and Company to the designs of H. O.
Cresswell in 1896–8 (Plate 50c). Two houses at the south
end, Nos. 94 and 96, which were damaged during the war
of 1939–45, have been replaced by the present No. 96. The
terrace was never entirely symmetrical, for the southernmost house was the Hertford Arms public house and was
treated in a more restrained manner without a gable and
projecting bays to the street front, while the northernmost
house (No. 104A) was built two storeys lower than the
remainder to satisfy the occupant of No. 52 Green Street
who complained about the loss of light to his house.
The initial overtures for the erection of these houses
may well have come from Cresswell himself, for when the
leases of the previous houses on the site expired in 1896,
H. T. Boodle, the Duke of Westminster's solicitor,
informed the Grosvenor Board that Cresswell (whose
name Boodle thought, apparently erroneously, was on the
list of architects approved by the Estate) had submitted a
design of which Balfour, the estate surveyor, approved. It
was resolved to ask him to be the architect for this range
and the one at Nos. 55–59 (consec.) Green Street which
was built at approximately the same time, and to offer the
rebuilding terms to William Cubitt and Company. The
Hertford Arms was rebuilt, also by Cubitts, on a direct
contract with the publican, but the remaining six houses
were erected as a speculation. (ref. 45)
The original development of this site had taken place in
and shortly after 1739 when the master builder Benjamin
Timbrell organized the building of a terrace of six houses.
He was a party to the several sub-leases granted in that year
and the houses were all occupied by 1747. (ref. 46) The large
house at the north end was built by Benjamin Timbrell's
son William for his own occupation, and he lived there
from 1739 until 1786. (ref. 4) These houses had undergone
substantial alteration by the time of their demolition in
1896, and No. 98 is known to have been rebuilt in 1826 (ref. 4)
(Plate 63a).
Occupants include: No. 96, Lord Edward Herbert Cecil,
soldier and colonial administrator, 1900–4. Sir Victor Mackenzie,
3rd bt., 1914–17. No. 98, Major William Murray, M.P., 1920–3.
No. 100, Lieut.-col. Sir Arthur Loetham, 1903–24.
St. Mary's Chapel
St. Mary's Chapel (demolished), a modest Georgian
preaching box at the south-east corner of Park Street and
Green Street, was built by William Timbrell and John
Spencer, carpenters, in 1762–3. Its site had originally been
acquired by Timbrell's father, Benjamin Timbrell, on
eighty-three-year leases in 1739, (ref. 47) but had remained
undeveloped. In 1762 William Timbrell and Spencer, who
were then partners, entered into an agreement with the
Reverend Pulter Forester of Cosgrove, Northamptonshire, to build a proprietary chapel there, half the cost of
which was to be borne by them and half by Forester. The
cost of building was £3,133. (ref. 48)
On the expiry of the original leasehold interest Lord
Grosvenor decided to take over the chapel and in 1825–6
he had repairs totalling £1,681 put in hand, initially under
the direction of Thomas Cundy I before his death in 1825.
The work included the stuccoing of the exterior in Roman
cement. (ref. 49) The chapel remained the direct concern of the
Grosvenors until its demolition in January 1882, shortly
after the opening of the new mission church of St. Mary's
in Bourdon Street. (ref. 50)
St. Mary's Chapel attracted little attention from
topographers or historians—one of the few to give it notice
described it as 'a remarkably plain, and in some measure
unsightly, looking building'—and there is little evidence of
its appearance. A small engraving published in c. 1835
shows a pedimented west front with an upper row of
windows, the centre one partly obscured by the pediment
of a tetrastyle Doric portico which projects to the edge of
the pavement: there are two more windows at ground
level, one on each side of the portico. The roof is contained
behind a parapet and is crowned by a domed turret with a
vane on top. (ref. 51) A drawing made at the time of the chapel's
demolition in 1882, however, shows a much changed west
front, now windowless and with a higher and wider Doric
portico, still tetrastyle but without a pediment (Plate 49a).
The domed turret and an embellished vane remain but the
eaves of the roof project forward. This transformation into
a more correct classical idiom seems characteristic of the
work of Thomas Cundy II and probably took place under
the aegis of the second Marquess sometime after 1845.
The interior, a typical small Georgian chapel, had box
pews, galleries carried on square piers which continued
upwards above the galleries as Ionic columns, a coved
ceiling in the centre with a modicum of ornamental
plasterwork, and a shallow recess in the east wall serving as
a chancel (Plate 49b).
The later history of this site is described on page 190.
Nos. 106–116 (even) Park Street and 19 Green Street
Nos. 106–116 (even) Park Street and 19 Green
Street originally consisted of a group of seven tall, bulky,
red-brick houses with large open projecting porches,
which were erected as a speculation in 1887–9 by the
architect James Trant Smith. His builder was G.
Smethurst. (ref. 52) The houses back on to Red Place (originally
Red Mews), which extended from Green Street to North
Row and which was laid out in 1889–91. (ref. 53)
Nos. 114 and 116 were severely damaged by bombing
during the war of 1939–45 and have been almost
completely rebuilt with a simplified elevation as one
building, now numbered 114.
Occupants include: No. 108, Marchioness of Blandford, exwife of Marquess of Blandford (later 8th Duke of Marlborough),
1903–32. No. 110, Thomas Cundy III, surveyor to the
Grosvenor estate, and his son, Thomas Elger Cundy, 1889–92.
No. 114, Dow. Lady Vernon, wid. of 6th Baron, 1892–8. No. 19
Green Street, Sir Edward Colebrooke, 5th bt. (later 1st Baron
Colebrooke), 1892–4.