MAYFAIR
A Village Within A City
In 1768 when he was 59 years old the famous English lexicographer, Dr. Samuel Johnson, wrote a friend that “London is the heart of the world and Mayfayr is the heart of London these days”. At that time the area known now as “Mayfair” had existed as an entity for just forty-three years. The area itself is generally agreed to be that which is bounded by Hyde Park on the west, Oxford Street on the north, Bond Street to the east and Piccadilly on the south border, with Green Park and Buckingham Palace just beyond.
This land amounts to just over one hundred acres. In 1626 it was a farm located on high, healthy ground to the west of the City of London. The land, known as the Manor of Ebury, had once been part of the lands belonging to the Abbey of Westminster. After Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, the farm passed into civil ownership. It had changed hands many times but, important to our present story, it was sold freehold in 1626 to Hugh Audley. The name sometimes is shown as “Auwdlay” plus other phonetic spellings.
Hugh Audley was a prominent solicitor and money lender. He also dealt in London property and clearly was a person of position and substance. Records tell us he had an inheritance of two hundred pounds when he came of age and built that into a fortune of over 400,000 pounds, an enormous sum for that era. Audley was a solicitor of the Inner Temple and held the post of Registrar of the Court of Wards and Liveries. But primarily he was a shrewd financier in real estate.
Hugh Audley never married. His estate passed to his deceased sister’s grandson, Alexander Davies, and, upon that man’s early death to Alexander’s small daughter, Mary Davies. Mary Davies’ story is a sad one. Her mother and stepfather affianced her when she was only eleven years old to a nobleman, the Hon. Charles Berkeley. They were to be married when Mary was twelve, then the age of consent. When Lord Berkeley, Charles’ father experienced financial difficulties, the engagement was broken, saving Mary from an untimely marriage.
This respite did not last long. Mary’s mother soon arranged for Mary to attract the attention of Sir Thomas Grosvenor. He was from the West Country with estates in Devon, Cornwall and Wales. In a short time and after negotiations as to dowry, Mary was married to Sir Thomas. Being barely thirteen at the time, she went to live in France with her aunt for two years. She returned to become Lady Grosvenor when she was sixteen.
Mary was truly an heiress. In addition to the famous One Hundred Acres of Mayfair which had come down to her from Hugh Audley, she also brought lands in what now is Pimlico and Belgravia. The Grosvenors, already wealthy in their own right, became truly rich with land.
Part of the “One Hundred Acres” of Mary Davies dowry had played host to a fair for many years before she married Sir Thomas. It was, however, around the turn of the 18th century that the name of the fair elided across to become the name of Sir Thomas Grosvenor’s acreage.
It is curious that a district now so fashionable as Mayfair should derive its name from a rather rowdy, racy fair. The location of the fair when it developed in the 17th century was on about ten acres on the north and south side of what now is Curzon Street. It was expanded down as far as Piccadilly and over into Green Park. Before the fair was established there that part of the farm was called Brookfield and was so named because Tyburn Brook flowed through it. Indeed, that brook, rising near Marble Arch, still follows its southerly path to the Thames through Mayfair, underneath Brook Street and Berkeley Square but is underground all the way.
The earliest fair (or “fayre”) dates back to the time of Edward I who granted the right to hold a fair to the Hospital of St. James located in what today is St. James Palace. It was to be held in St. James Park. Enter Henry VIII again, seizing the Hospital from the church during the dissolution. In fact, he acquired the land for the Crown, enclosed the park, and transferred the fair northward across Piccadilly to the west end of Brookfield, just about where Shepherds Market is now located. In 1688 James II changed the fair’s name to May Fair, reflecting the time of year when it was authorized. His charter allowed the organizer, Mr. Edward Shepherd, to open the fair “annually and forever” on May 1 and to conduct it for 15 days. There were to be “a multitude of booths, not for trade or commerce, but for musick, shows, drinking, gaming, raffling lotteries, stage plays, and drolls”.
Later on the King also granted Mr. Shepherd the right to mount a cattle and horse market in conjunction with the festivities. The first two days the livestock was presented for sale. The rest of the two weeks were given over to operation of the pleasure fair. The fair soon was allowed to have booths for tradesmen. At county fairs at that time it was customary for a large amount of business in the countryside to be carried on at the fairs. This became so at the May Fair, too, in a short time.
A description of some of the entertainments at the Mayfair in 1702 mentions “a booth with roped dancing, an excellent droll (political farce) called A Shoemaker and a Prince, the best machines, swings and dancing ever yet in a Fair”.
Unfortunately there was trouble along with the merriment as the fair grew larger yearly. Each year more and more rogues and pickpockets mingled with the Mayfair’s crowds. Constables had to be called in almost daily. In 1705 a constable was slain by ruffians. In 1706 there were petitions to Queen Anne for suppression of the fair. Others were sent to King George I and to George II in 1722. This was, as we will see, when the Grosvenor development of Mayfair was beginning.
The fair was finally disestablished in 1730 by royal decree. However, remnants stayed around until the early 1800s as some booths became stalls, then shops. We see a reminder today in the shops in Shepherd’s Market, between Curzon Street and Piccadilly. It is just at the foot of South Audley. Mr. Edward Shepherd held the sublease on the farmland where the fair was held and established his “market” when the fair folded. His house still stands near there and is owned by the Japanese Embassy.
At this time it is appropriate to return to the Grosvenor activities in Mayfair. It was in 1723 that Sir Richard Grosvenor, son of Sir Thomas and Mary Davies, and the inheritor of the One Hundred Acres, decided to develop the northern and western portions of the area as a type of planned neighborhood. It was clear from the beginning that it would be a development of large houses for prosperous citizens of London. The nucleus of the development was Grosvenor Square and the first streets to be laid out were Brook Street, Upper Grosvenor Street, South and North Audley Streets and Duke Street. Green Street was not shown on the first plats of 1722 but three years later it was added and shown on the official charts, running as today from Park Lane to Audley Street.
The Mayfair development, as it was immediately named, proved successful, this in spite of a general turndown in real estate sales during the mid-18th century. As Mount Street, Davies Street, Berkeley Square, Grosvenor Square and others were built up, the owners of the land leases and the owner of the land, Sir Richard Grosvenor, took steps to improve the neighborhood. A good example is the pressure they exerted to end the use of Tyburn Hill as London’s execution place. Contemporary comments clearly show their efforts to do this were in order to make the NW portion of Mayfair, i.e. Oxford Street, Green Street and Grosvenor Square, more desirable.
Public executions in London had been held at Tyburn since 1193. The exact site today is the center of the traffic circle at Marble Arch. As we know it is just two blocks from No. 53 Green Street. Since execution by hanging (or worse, quartering) were the penalties for almost every delict, Tyburn was a busy place.
Condemned prisoners were brought by cart on what is now Oxford Street from Newgate and other prisons. Londoners of the era considered executions public entertainment, so crowds gathered along the route and, especially, at or near Tyburn itself. Although citizens of all classes were there, the place always had a good number of pickpockets, muggers and inebriated citizens on hand.
Inevitably, these types wandered off into Brook Street, Green Street and the most elegant new residential venue, Grosvenor Square. Protests from leaseholders grew steadily.
Beginning in the 1770s, the Grosvenor interests lobbied Parliament and the Palace for a change to non-public executions inside prison walls. With the strong backing of several public interest groups, plus the Church, this came to pass in October 1783, almost 600 years after the first Tyburn execution. The value of Mayfair land went steadily up thereafter.
The elimination of Tyburn executions also had a great influence on Oxford Street. It had evolved from a major Roman road but had never developed into an important thoroughfare. From the day that Tyburn was disestablished, Oxford Street prospered and was improved, becoming the trade location of choice. First it was small shops, then larger more stylish stores. Within forty years it developed into “England’s High Street”, the pacesetter for tradesmen throughout the Empire. As we can see for ourselves, Oxford Street remains so today, even though the Empire has faded away.
In the mid-to-late Nineteenth Century, other great shopping streets came into being right in Mayfair. The most famous, perhaps, is Bond Street but Dover Street, Albemarle Street, and Savile Row also come to mind. All are just a short walk from Green Street.
Great houses, even palaces, also were built in Mayfair in the 18th and 19th centuries. Noble families and those of great wealth moved westward from the Strand and the City, building massive homes along Piccadilly, Park Lane and around Grosvenor and Berkeley Squares. Today only a few remain: Lansdowne House (now a club); Crewe House in Curzon St.; Stafford House, now a hotel; and Burlington House in Piccadilly. Grosvenor House was demolished and the hotel bearing the same name was built there behind the old façade. Apsley House still stands in the form of a museum dedicated to the victor of Waterloo, overlooking Hyde Park and the beginning of Piccadilly.
Along with the great houses came the magnificent hotels. Mayfair was and is full of wonderful hotels. Brown’s Hotel is the oldest one remaining although Claridge’s, the Connaught, and the Ritz on Piccadilly also date from the last century. Those that have followed in this century have all come to Mayfair, i.e. the Dorchester, Park Lane, etc. The newest gran lux establishment, the Lanesborough, is literally just on the border line at Hyde Park Corner.
Mayfair also is a magnet for diplomatic establishments. Leaving aside our huge American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, the “village” of Mayfair shelters the Canadian Embassy, the Brazilian Embassy just up our street, the Icelandic, Japanese, and seven other major nations’ diplomatic missions. This trend is increasing as new nations come into being. All want to be part of the London scene as soon as they are recognized.
During the 19th century and the present (20th) century, the Grosvenor Estate kept close control of most of the land in Mayfair which is, of course, located in the Borough of Westminster. Through astute management and use of the leaseholds presently allowed under British law, the area has grown exponentially in value. The leasehold laws are under pressure and have been substantially weakened by recent Parliaments. The Estate, however, holds firm against selling freeholds if possible.
A true anecdote illustrating the Estate’s determination not to sell Mayfair land involves our embassy building (chancery) on Grosvenor Square. In 1950 it was decided that the existing embassy building, located at the southeast corner of Grosvenor Square was far too small for post-World War II diplomatic, military and economic missions. The preferred location for the new building was directly across the Square from the old embassy, embracing the entire west side from Upper Grosvenor Street to Upper Brook Street.
It was and still is United States policy to own outright the land on which our chanceries around the world are built. When our State Department officials approached the British, they were told that the Grosvenor Estate responded “we will only sell a leasehold” to the Americans, or anyone else. Intense pressure was applied through every avenue but the answer was “no sale, just leases.”
After more than a year of fruitless effort and negotiations the Grosvenor trustees weakened, saying they would “give the site to the U.S. Government with one proviso: that the U.S. return the Grosvenor family’s 12,000+ acres of land in East Florida confiscated by the American nation at the time of the War of Independence.” It was a property which included most of Cape Canaveral and land surrounding the St. Johns River near Palatka.
This spelled the end of negotiations regarding buying the site. Instead, both sides agreed to a super-long lease of 999 years and our London embassy is the only one in the world where our government does not own the underlying land.
Today at the turn of the millennium we see Mayfair as still a village within a town within a great city. A nineteenth century resident of Green Street, the Reverend Sydney Smith, the famous Victorian raconteur and reformer once said, “Mayfair encloses more intelligence, human ability, to say nothing of wealth and beauty, than the world ever collected in so small a place.”
Mayfair is a lively, lovely place, and we are fortunate to share ownership of a wonderful house in this wonderful village.