Balderton Street
This street, which was named George Street until 1886,
was principally laid out in the 1730's with small, rather
mean houses. Their occupants were generally poor, and by
the nineteenth century the street also contained warehouses, workshops and a small brewery. (ref. 136) From 1871 it
was entirely rebuilt, mainly with blocks of artisans'
dwellings or parochial buildings which were erected on the
initiative of the vigorous vicar of St. Mark's, the Reverend
J. W. Ayre.
Mayfair Court:
No. 1 Balderton Street and No. 35
North Row, of red brick and stone, was erected in 1910–11
by Walter Lawrence and Son to the designs of Taperell
and Haase as a block of chambers with business premises
on the ground floor. (ref. 137)
St. Mark's Mansions, Balderton Street
St. Mark's Mansions, Balderton Street (Plate 30c in
vol. XXXIX), was built as a parochial institute in 1872–3 on
the initiative of the Reverend J. W. Ayre, on a site which
was leased by the third Marquess (later first Duke) of
Westminster at a very low ground rent. The building,
which is in a red-brick Gothic style with two prominent
oriels, was designed by R. J. Withers and built by Matthew
Allen and Son of Finsbury at a cost of £6,775. It included a
soup kitchen, a church hall, premises for the parish
working-men's club, a reading-room and library, model
lodgings for parish workers and the teaching staff of St.
Mark's Schools, and classrooms. (ref. 138)
No. 16 Balderton Street (The Polytechnic Annexe)
No. 16 Balderton Street (The Polytechnic Annexe)
began its life as a parish gymnasium designed by William J.
Bamber and partially erected in 1886–7 by J. M. Macey
and Sons. The Reverend J. W. Ayre, the vicar of St.
Mark's, who persuaded the Duke of Westminster to
provide the site, was not able to raise sufficient money to
complete the building, however, and it remained in an
unfinished state, held on a yearly tenancy, until Ayre's
death in 1898. His successor, the Reverend R. H. Hadden,
was a governor of the Regent Street Polytechnic (now The
Polytechnic of Central London), and he informed the
Estate that the Polytechnic would be prepared to take over
and adapt the building at a cost of some £5,000.
Accordingly a new ninety-year lease was granted and in
1900 alterations were put in hand under the direction of
W. B. Pinhey, architect and surveyor. At the same time the
Polytechnic also took over part of St. Mark's Mansions
and, in 1904, the former St. Mark's Schools. (ref. 139)
The Polytechnic Annexe is a four-storey building in a
minimally Gothic style faced with red brick and painted
stone or composition dressings. The windows and
doorway on the ground floor are set within pointed arches
but on the upper floors these give way to simple mullionedand-transomed windows with at the top three triangular
gables decorated with a chequer-board pattern and, in the
centre, heraldic shields which have been largely worn
away.
Garage, Balderton Street.
This was built in 1925–6
by F. and H. F. Higgs to the designs of Wimperis and
Simpson and, unusually for the Grosvenor estate, is a
reinforced-concrete building which uses vestigial classical
mouldings to relieve its otherwise plain lines. (ref. 140)
For Balderton Flats, Clarendon Flats and other
blocks of model dwellings in the vicinity of Balderton
Street, see Chapter VI.