Today’s Route
York Terrace East
Sir Charles Wyndham (1837 – 1919) – actor-manager.
Born Charles Culverwell in Liverpool. Shortly after the start of his stage career he went to America where he ended up volunteering as a military surgeon on the Union side (he had qualified as a doctor in England). After resigning his contract with the army he returned to the stage in the US with some success. On one occasion he appeared in New York with John Wilkes-Booth. Returning to England his career flourished and in 1899 he opened the Wyndhams Theatre, which still bears his name, in London.
The Doric Villa is something of a fancy gaff as you can see here.
Marylebone Road
The Royal Academy of Music – was founded in 1822 and is Britain’s oldest degree-granting music school. In 1911 moved to this location (which includes the 450-seat Duke’s Hall) and was built at a cost of £51,000 on the site of an orphanage.
St Marylebone Parish Church – built to the designs of Thomas Hardwick in 1813-17. The Marylebone area takes its name from the church. A bomb fell in the churchyard close by during WWII, blowing out all the windows, piercing the ceiling over the reredos in two places with pieces of iron railing from the school playground and necessitating the church’s closure for repairs until 1949, when fragments of the original coloured glass were incorporated into the new windows (as you can see above). Personally I prefer the aesthetic effect of this to many intact stained-glass windows.
Charles Dickens was a local resident (1812–1870), in Devonshire Terrace. His son was baptised in the church (a ceremony fictionalised in “Dombey and Son”). I think I can work out 4 or 5 of these but have no idea about the one with the bird.
Madame Tussaud’s, on the other side of the street, is a charming palace of entertainment much beloved of tourists to the city which creates a vibrant and sophisticated ambience.
Luxborough Street
Luxborough Tower – built at the tail end of the sixties contemporaneously with its neighbour, the Polytechnic (now University) of Westminster, on the site of the Marylebone workhouse. The LCC architects responsible cited Le Corbusier as an influence.
Marylebone High Street
This is the site of the third incarnation of Marylebone Parish Church which was demolished in 1949 and is now a public garden. As you can see quite an impressive roll call of people were buried here and in addition the church that stood here witnessed the baptism of Lord Byron and welcomed Lord Nelson as a worshipper.
Oxfam bookshop in Marylebone High Street has a very extensive inventory – including this full set of Transvision Vamp picture cover singles – yours for a fiver.
Paddington Street
Paddington Street Gardens – were built in the 18th century as additional burial grounds for the church though all that remains of its original purpose is the mausoleum you can see here which was built by the Hon. Richard Fitzpatrick in memory of his wife Susanna. The gardens also possess some very handy, free and well-maintained public conveniences (something of a rarity these days.)
The Hellenic Centre – began life in the 1900s as a Swedish gymnastics college and served as a Swedish War Hospital for the British wounded during WW1. In 1992 the Hellenic Community trust acquired the building and the Hellenic Centre opened as a cultural centre in 1994.
The Swedish Gymnastics college was founded by Martina Sofia Helena Bergman-Österberg (1849 – 1915), a Swedish PE instructor and women’s suffrage advocate. After studying in Stockholm she moved to London, where she founded the first physical education instructor’s college in England, to which she admitted women only. Bergman-Österberg pioneered teaching physical education as a full subject within the English school curriculum, with Swedish-style gymnastics at its core. She also advocated the use of gymslips by women playing sports, and played a pivotal role in the early development of netball.
Ashland Street
Has to be one of the narrowest thoroughfares in the capital. Good luck getting your sodding Range Rover down there.
Moxon Street
Marylebone Village (as it likes to style itself !!) is pretty swanky these days. Moxon Street is also home to the renowned upmarket butcher’s – the Ginger Pig. I remember back in the seventies you’d have been lucky to find a Wimpy round here.
Weymouth Mews
Pub of the day – The Dover Castle.
A bit tucked out of the way so I had the place to myself to start with. Part of the estimable Sam Smith’s chain so very reasonably priced. Pint of best and a pulled pork roll for less than nine quid.
Mansfield Street
John Loughborough Pearson, 1817 – 1897, and later, Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens, 1869 – 1944, architects.
Lutyens is the much more celebrated (and interesting of the pair) Designer of the Cenotaph and consulting architect for Hampstead Garden Suburb, he also spent many years designing a large chunk of New Delhi to serve as the seat of British government. Had a close but difficult marriage, losing his wife to Krishnamurti and his Theosophical teachings, for a time at least.
Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope (1753 – 1816) – British statesman and scientist. He was the father of the great traveller and Arabist Lady Hester Stanhope and brother-in-law of William Pitt the Younger. He was the chairman of the “Revolution Society,” founded in honour of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In 1790 the members of the society expressed their sympathy with the aims of the French Revolution and in 1795 he introduced into the Lords a motion deprecating any interference with the internal affairs of France. This put him in a “minority of one”—a sobriquet which stuck to him throughout life. Prior to acceding the peerage he was member of parliament for my home town of High Wycombe – it is doubtful that any of the subsequent representatives of this constituency have ever expressed any sympathy with any kind of revolution.
Weymouth Street
Wimpole Street
Renowned for The Barretts of Wimpole Street, a play written by Rudolf Besier in 1930, based on the romance between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, and her father’s unwillingness to allow them to marry. She was six years older than him and semi-invalided, though the much better known poet of the two at the time. But marry they did, in 1846 in (where else) St Marylebone Parish Church. The play was filmed in 1934 and 1957, directed both times by Sidney Franklin.
De Walden Street
In this and the parallel Wheatley Street all the front doors are painted different colours (purely for the sake of affectation I can only presume.
Chiltern Street
Home of that nouveau-riche mecca, the Chiltern Firehouse. Not sure if the celebrity clientele has moved on yet but the menu doesn’t inspire me to fork out the eye-watering prices required.
The Marylebone Fire Station was built in 1889, by the London County Council’s Architect’s Department (them again), “in the Vulliamy manner”. “Red brick with stone dressings; tiled roof, Tudor-Gothic style”. The Fire Station was decommissioned in June 2005 and the hotel/restaurant opened eight years later.
Montagu Street
The year of the White Album and also John and Yoko’s solo effort – “Unfinished Music No.1 – Two Virgins” (to slightly less critical acclaim). This was actually Ringo Starr’s flat and it was here that John and Yoko were arrested for drug possession on 18 October.
Gloucester Place
Wilkie Collins (1824 – 1889) – Author of “The Moonstone” and “The Woman in White” (not to be confused with the much inferior Woman in Black) and possessor of a beard to make hipsters weep . If you’ve never read it I can also recommend the exceptionally ripe melodrama that is “Armadale”.
Manchester Square
The Wallace Collection – was established in 1897 from the private collection mainly created by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800–1870), who left it and the house to his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace (1818–1890), whose widow bequeathed the entire collection to the nation. The museum opened to the public in 1900 in Hertford House, Manchester Square, and remains there, housed in its entirety, to this day. A condition of the bequest was that no object ever leave the collection, even for loan exhibitions. Admission is free.
Crap selfie of the day
Rembrandt self portrait
Hals’ “Laughing Cavalier”
Velasquez’s “Small child dressed as Dalek”
Possibly my favourite picture in the collection, Domenico Zampieri’s “The Persian Sibyl” (Part of his “Persian Fawlty Towers” series
A couple of wonky Canalettos depicting pre-massive cruise-liner Venice.
One general observation – it appears from certain of the work on display that either “wardrobe malfunctions” were a lot more prevalent in those days and tit-grabbing not quite the social kiss-of-death it is today or else your 16th century male painter was a bit of a perv.
everystreetinlondon 