Conclusion
The development of the Grosvenor estate in Mayfair
proceeded with great pace until 1740, and then in a more
desultory fashion as the momentum of building slowed
throughout the metropolis. In 1741 the builder Roger
Blagrave was complaining about paying rates on several
of his houses in South Street which were standing
empty, (ref. 316) and of the thirty-eight builders on the estate
who are known to have become bankrupt, nine suffered
this fate during the years 1740 to 1742. In 1754 the parish
Vestry drew attention to the unsatisfactory state of the
western end of Upper Brook Street, where land on the
south side had stood vacant for some time, (ref. 317) and the
twenty-year gap between the dates when sub-leases were
granted to the builders of No. 35 (1737) and No. 34
(1756) (ref. 318) suggests a considerable slackening in demand
over this period. Nevertheless, despite the lapse of over
fifty years before building work on the estate was completed, the basic layout scheme was adhered to with little
alteration, and on the whole the development can be
accounted a success. Horwood's map of 1792–9 shows
that some 1,375 houses were built on the estate, besides
many other buildings such as coach-houses, stables, workshops, riding houses, chapels and a workhouse. The
evidence of ratebooks suggests that there were few very
long delays in filling houses once built and the presence
among the early occupants of many people of rank and
wealth indicates that fashionable society was well represented from the very start (see Chapter V).
Sir John Summerson has remarked that in the eighteenth
century 'Ground landlords rarely found it practicable to
dictate the architectural character of the buildings on their
land. They might set out the lines of the streets and
squares, but once the building agreements were signed
the control of elevations was virtually out of their hands'. (ref. 319)
This was certainly true on the Grosvenor estate. The
Grosvenors commissioned the severely rectilinear layout
and provided a good deal of practical assistance to builders
but they appear to have eschewed any overall aesthetic
control. The only notable case in which architectural
uniformity was achieved was on the east side of Grosvenor
Square, where a composite elevation with centre and
wings was created by the undertaker John Simmons.
Edward Shepherd did the same in a slightly grander style
with three houses on the north side, but they were not
even in the centre of the long range of thirteen houses
there. In the description of the square in the 1754 edition
of Stow's Survey the author remarks that the lack of
uniformity in the houses had been criticized but concludes that 'they are so far uniform, as to be all sashed
and of pretty near an equal Height'. (ref. 320) Much the same
could be said of the other streets. The kind of overall
architectural composition which John Crunden achieved
in the 1770's with a small group of three houses in Park
Street between North Row and Hereford Street (Plate 13c)
was very much the exception, and, of course, in this case
dated from the end of the development. Elsewhere the
generality of plain brick façades no doubt provided a
measure of homogeneity, and most houses appear to have
been of three storeys with basements and garrets (an effect
now largely obscured by the addition of one or more extra
storeys to many houses), but the storey heights were by
no means uniform and the width of frontages differed
widely. (fn. a)
An example of the suspicion with which building
tradesmen regarded attempts to produce uniformity
occurs in the agreement of 1742 to build a group of seven
houses in Upper Brook Street, previously mentioned on
page 24. Here the words 'that the said Houses shall have
a continued Brick Facie through the same and the several
Windows thereof shall respectively rainge with each other
so as to make a regular Line of Building as to the said
Facie and Windows' have all been struck through, the
alteration being insisted upon by the several building
tradesmen who were parties to the agreement before they
would execute the deed. (ref. 226)
The most important houses were generally built in
Grosvenor Square and the principal east-west streets,
viz.: Brook Street and Upper Brook Street, Grosvenor
Street and Upper Grosvenor Street. There were exceptions, notably Bourdon House in Davies Street, Roger
Morris's own house at No. 61 Green Street, Ligonier's
house at No. 12 North Audley Street, the range for which
Edward Shepherd was undertaker at Nos. 71–75 (consec.)
South Audley Street and the group of houses opposite at
Nos. 9–16 (consec.), all of which survive in some form.
Some of the larger houses built in Park Lane and the
north-western corner of the estate at a late date also
deviated from the general pattern, and, from the evidence
of the social status of their occupants, the houses at the
south end of Park Street with gardens extending to Park
Lane were of some quality. Even some of the smaller
houses in streets like North Audley Street, Duke Street
or South Street—selling at about £200 to £300 or renting
at approximately £25 per annum—were, however, by no
means insubstantial. The house on the east side of North
Audley Street which Richard Barlow rented from Edward
Shepherd in 1733 for £24 had a yard or garden and a
stable behind, and consisted of three storeys and a basement. The rooms above ground were 'wainscotted all
round from bottom to top' and had Portland stone or
marble chimneypieces. (ref. 321) Houses built by John Jenner
on the south side of Mount Row, which was essentially
a mews, were of low annual value, but an insurance policy
on one of them for £200 shows that it had three storeys
and a garret with four rooms wainscotted and four Portland stone chimneypieces. (ref. 322)
Some of the houses in Mount Row were sub-divided
from the time of first letting, and, despite the reputation
of Mayfair as a preserve of the rich, there was originally
a good deal of accommodation for the less well-to-do, not
least on the Grosvenor estate. There were a number of
courts and passages, some of them opening out of the
principal streets, and several of the mews had dwelling
houses as well as stables and coach-houses built in them,
particularly Adams Mews (now Row), Grosvenor Mews
(now Grosvenor Hill, Bourdon Street and Bourdon
Place), Lees Mews (now Place), Mount Row and Reeves
Mews. In the northern part of the estate, where large
blocks of land had been let under single leases with few
restrictive covenants, streets like James (now Gilbert)
Street and Bird (now Binney) Street were laid out in
rows of narrow-fronted houses which had very little open
space at the rear. These houses in the vicinity of Gilbert
Street were rebuilt during the years 1822 to 1833 in the
first major redevelopment scheme to take place on the
estate, but there is no evidence that any desire to raise
the social cachet of the area lay behind the decision of the
Grosvenor Estate to sanction this speculative venture
by the builder Seth Smith.
Brown's Court, which lay between North Row and
Green Street, and was one of several such alleys on the
south side of North Row, is an example of the lower level
of housing provided on the estate. The ground on which
it was laid out was part of the large area bounded by North
Row, North Audley Street, Green Street and Park Street
which was leased en bloc in 1728 at a ground rent of four
shillings per annum. (ref. 323) The lease stipulated merely that
'good and substantial' houses should be built on the
main street frontages and the only restricted trade was
that of a brewer. In 1730 John Brown, bricklayer, was
granted a sub-lease of part of this ground (ref. 324) and by
1739 (ref. 71) he had built nine tiny two-storey houses along
a ten-foot-wide court entered from Green Street and
North Row through even narrower arched passageways.
Some of the houses had garrets and cellars but several
had neither. Each house was virtually one room deep
with a yard behind, and the small closet wings belonging
to some of the houses shown in the ground plan of the
court at the end of the eighteenth century (fig. 1) may have
been additions. Brown's Court was largely, or perhaps
completely, rebuilt in 1824 (ref. 325) and was swept away during
the redevelopment of the north side of Green Street at
the end of the nineteenth century.
Figure 1:
Brown's Court with adjoining houses in Green Street and North Row. Ground-floor plan in c. 1800
Some idea of the unsatisfactory condition of that area
of the estate which lay immediately to the south of Oxford
Street at the beginning of the nineteenth century can be
gleaned from a letter written in 1816 to Lord Grosvenor
by Edward Boodle, his lawyer. He had been induced, he
wrote, 'to be of a Committee of Inhabitants to go round
a part of the Parish between the North side of Grosvenor
Square and Green Street, and the South side of Oxford
Street', and he had 'never experienced in one day more
scenes of distress and misery than presented themselves
to us in the course of that day's investigation'. (ref. 326) The first
Duke of Westminster was later to make the improvement
of this area one of his major philanthropic concerns, and
in the late nineteenth century several blocks of working-class dwellings were erected to the north of Grosvenor
Square and Brook Street. They replaced the run-down
houses which were the legacy of the treatment of this part
of the estate as a relative backwater from the start of
development.
The extensive stabling required by the occupants of
the larger houses—many had more than one coach-house—spilled out from the mews into the lesser streets.
Some attempt was made to limit this by provisions in
building agreements, but stabling with access directly
into the roadway was built in South Street, Park Lane and
Oxford Street among others, and parts of the frontages
of the 'cross streets' (as the north-south streets were
called) were taken up with either garden walls or the flank
walls of coach-houses and stables. Several large blocks of
stables and 'riding houses' were also built, usually for
army regiments, the largest being that provided in the
1730's by Roger Morris for the Second Troop of Horse
Guards between Green Street and Wood's Mews. The
presence of such buildings does not seem to have been
considered detrimental to the amenities of the estate; no
specific restrictions appear to have been placed on their
use, and care was taken in the leasing of adjoining plots
to preserve their light: (ref. 327) for the stables built by Morris
a plot on the south side of Green Street was even left
vacant to be used as a 'dung place'. (ref. 328)
For the ground landlords the principal benefit of the
development lay, of course, in the distant future when
the terms of the first building leases would come to an
end, and renewals could be granted at greatly enhanced
rents with premiums or fines payable on renewal. In the
meantime, however, some years elapsed before their
income from the new buildings even matched their
expenditure. The agricultural rent received from the
fields in Mayfair in the early eighteenth century was
between £3 and £4 an acre, (ref. 329) or probably somewhat less
than £400 for the whole estate there. Once the land had
been turned over to the builders the income from ground
rents did not begin to exceed this figure until 1725, (ref. 45) and
it was during these early years that the Grosvenors were
spending heavily in the promotion of their new development. If the account of Dame Mary Grosvenor's personal
estate at her death in 1730 is taken at its face value, the
money spent for this purpose up to that time exceeded
the total income received from the speculation by over
£4,500. (ref. 40) In 1732, however, Sir Richard Grosvenor was
able to reap an early advantage from the whole project
by borrowing £10,000 at 4 per cent interest from one of
his tenants, the loan being made on the security of the
newly created ground rents of houses in Brook Street,
Grosvenor Street and Grosvenor Square. (ref. 180) As more and
more houses were built the income gradually increased,
and in 1743 this loan was repaid. (ref. 330) Eventually the ground
rents received from the whole of The Hundred Acres
amounted in 1768 (before any leases had been renewed)
to £3,133 per annum, or £31 per acre, (ref. 331) plus £312 per
annum received in improved rents from Sir Robert
Grosvenor's trust estate. (ref. 332)
Because of the great extent of their landholdings in
various parts of England and Wales, it is difficult to
determine the effect of the development of Mayfair upon
the Grosvenor family's finances, but there is little doubt
that the reversionary value of the houses there as building
leases began to fall in was a crucial factor in helping to
preserve solvency at a difficult period. By the 1770's the
affairs of Lord Grosvenor had reached a parlous state:
besides his establishment at Eaton he maintained a racing
stable at Newmarket costing over £7,000 a year and paid
out another £9,400 annually in jointures, annuities and
interest charges on mortgages (including £1,200 to his
estranged wife). He had apparently been living beyond
his means for some time and in 1779 his debts amounted
to over £150,000. (ref. 73) On the advice in particular of his
London agent, Thomas Walley Partington, he contemplated selling all of his estates in Middlesex with the
exception of The Hundred Acres in Mayfair and
Grosvenor Place in Belgravia. He prevaricated, however,
much to the annoyance of Partington, who concluded one
letter with remarkable frankness, 'Do my Lord recollect
what I laid before you . . . and for Gods sake as you value
your own peace of mind, resolve upon something before
Lady Day'. (ref. 333) Eventually in 1785 his estates were conveyed to five trustees, viz.: his brother Thomas Grosvenor,
the Right Honourable Thomas Harley, the bankers
Robert and Henry Drummond, and Thomas Walley
Partington, to sell some lands and use the money, together
with the remaining rents, to discharge the debts. (ref. 334) Over
the next twenty years the increasing income from fines
and higher rents as leases were renewed in Mayfair
helped to retrieve the situation (see page 38), and in the
event none of the London estates had to be sold. With
the management of the estate passing to trustees and the
appointment of an estate surveyor to advise on policy
with regard to lease renewals in the 1780's, however,
a new stage in the history of the estate had effectively
begun.