Hill Street, London

Hill Street is a street in Mayfair, London, which runs south-west, then west, from Berkeley Square to Deanery Street, a short approach way from Park Lane. It was developed from farmland in the 18th century.[3] Travelling one block to the east and south sees a fall of about three metres, whereas in the other direction the land rises gradually across six main blocks to beyond the north of Marble Arch (see Hyde Park). Hill Street's homes gained fashionable status from the outset: grand townhouses seeing use, at first, as seasonal lettings (rentals) and/or longer-term London homes of nobility — later, of other wealthy capitalists as much. Twenty-two, approximately half of its town houses, are listed. Along its course, only Audley Square House departs from townhouse-sized frontage, yet this shares in the street's predominant form of domestic architecture, Georgian neo-classical. Hill Street's public house is the oldest surviving one in Mayfair.

This article is about the street in Mayfair. For other Hill Streets, see Hill Street.

At №5, the Coach and Horses co-fronts Hays Mews. It dates to the 1740s when the street was laid out. It was then a coaching inn and is the oldest surviving public house in Mayfair.[1] The building is Grade II-listed.[2]

Development and architecture
Hill Street marked in red on John Rocque's map of 1746

The street's development was overseen in the 1740s by local landowner Lord Berkeley, who owned the house, gardens and farm holdings now covered by Berkeley Square and streets beyond. When John Rocque produced his map of London in 1746, most streets on the west side of this square were shown in outline as building was underway; Hill Street was among the last area of farmland, and thus crosses "Farm" Street. Hill Street is like Mount Street and others to the north in dropping a little over three metres toward its east end, but here the land falls the same amount – though more rapidly – toward the next block south, scaled by Chesterfield Hill (in previous years named John Street) and Hays Mews; similarly to the east where the Tyburn ran.[4]

Foremost architects used were Benjamin Timbrell, as to №s17 and 19 c.1748,[5] and Oliver Hill, as to №15 in the 1920s.[6]

Claud Phillimore refurbished №35 for Lady Astor in the late 1940s, giving six storeys and a basement for a grand and comfortable residence. Lady Astor's personal living room – "the Boudoir" – had walls decorated with blue satin.[7] Twenty-two of the town houses are listed buildings: №s1 and 3,[8] 7,[9] 8,[10] 9,[11] 10,[12] 11,[13] 20,[14] 22,[15] 25,[16] 26,[17] 29,[18] 31,[19] 33,[20] 35,[21] 36,[22] 38,[23] 40,[24] and 42 and 44 Hill Street are listed Grade II;[25] №19 is Grade II*; №17 has the highest status, Grade I.[26][27]

Literary associations
Mrs. Montagu's Room of Cupidons
Before the palace in Portman Square was built she had lived in Hill Street, Mayfair, her rooms in which are thus depicted by the last-named writer the date being 1773, when Mrs. Montagu was fifty-seven. "If I had paper and time I could entertain you with the account of Mrs. M.'s Room of Cupidons, which was opened with an assembly for all the foreigners, the literati, and the macaronis of the present age. Many and sly are the observations. How such a genius, at her age, and so circumstanced (Mr. M. had recently taken his upward flight), could think of painting the walls of her dressing-room with bowers of roses and jessamines entirely inhabited by little cupids in all their little wanton ways, is astonishing."

Doctor Johnson and the Fair Sex: A Study of Contrasts, W. H. Craig, 1895

Elizabeth Montagu held literary parties in Hill Street.

Elizabeth Montagu hosted a literary salon at her house in Hill Street. Her circle was known as the Blue Stockings Society, and Samuel Johnson called her the "Queen of the Blues".[28] Other luminaries who attended her gatherings included Edmund Burke, David Garrick, Joshua Reynolds and Horace Walpole.[28]

In Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park, Henry and Mary Crawford's uncle is an admiral living in Hill Street.[29] Sir Walter Scott's novel Waverley, in which the hero's father is a Whig politician who lives in Hill Street, was published at the same time.[30]

In Thackeray's Vanity Fair, several characters live on Great Gaunt Street or the adjoining Gaunt Square, including Lord and Lady Steyne and Sir Pitt Crawley. This fictional street was modelled on Hill Street.[31] In addition, Lady Bareacres in the novel lives on Hill Street.

Evelyn Waugh satirised Mayfair decadence in his novel Vile Bodies. In this, along Hill Street stood fictional Pastmaster House – "the William and Mary mansion of Lord and Lady Metroland with a magnificent ballroom, 'by universal consent the most beautiful building between Bond Street and Park Lane'".[32]

The Bright Young Thing society novelist Nancy Mitford stayed at №40 in 1955.[33]

Prestige
Charles Booth's Poverty Map, 1889, identifies gold (top) and other wealthy incomes for Mayfair, including all this street, and finds poor parts of Soho to the far east; and the height of ground is given in feet.
A cast-iron bollard at the corner of Hill Street and Chesterfield Hill. There are four such bollards in Hill Street, all of them Grade II-listed. They are of an early 19th-century cannon design and are intended to protect pedestrians from large turning vehicles cutting the corner. The cast lettering, obscured by many layers of black paint, reads "St George's Hanover Square".[34][35]

This was among the prestigious streets of wealthy London socialites and politicians in the 18th and 19th centuries, and notable residents have included:

References
  1. Coach & Horses, London, Shepherd Neame
  2. Historic England (1 December 1987). "Coach and Horses public house (1357097)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 12 October 2013.
  3. White, Jerry (2013), A Great and Monstrous Thing: London in the eighteenth century, Harvard University Press, pp. 31, 107, ISBN 9780674076402
  4. Walford, Edward (1878), "Berkeley Square and its neighbourhood", Old and New London, Vol. 4, pp. 326–338
  5. "19, Hill Street W1, Westminster". British Listed Buildings. Retrieved 10 October 2013.
  6. Bradbury, Oliver (2008), The Lost Mansions of Mayfair, p. 26, ISBN 9781905286232
  7. Adrian Fort (2012), Nancy: The Story of Lady Astor, Random House, p. 316, ISBN 9780224090162
  8. Historic England, "1 and 3 Hill Street, W1 (1278328)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  9. Historic England, "7 Hill Street, W1 (1231000)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  10. Historic England, "8 Hill Street, W1 (1066628)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  11. Historic England, "9 Hill Street, W1 (1066658)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  12. Historic England, "10 Hill Street, W1 (1066629)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  13. Historic England, "11 Hill Street, W1 (1248394)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  14. Historic England, "20 Hill Street, W1 (1066630)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  15. Historic England, "22 Hill Street, W1 (1357121)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  16. Historic England, "25 Hill Street, W1 (1066623)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  17. Historic England, "26 Hill Street, W1 (1278284)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  18. Historic England, "29 Hill Street, W1 (1066624)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  19. Historic England, "31 Hill Street, W1 (1066625)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  20. Historic England, "33 Hill Street, W1 (1066626)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  21. Historic England, "35 Hill Street, W1 (1066627)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  22. Historic England, "36 Hill Street, W1 (1066631)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  23. Historic England, "38 Hill Street, W1 (1278289)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  24. Historic England, "40 Hill Street, W1 (1357122)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  25. Historic England, "42 and 44 Hill Street, W1 (1231091)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  26. Historic England, "17 Hill Street, W1 (1066622)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  27. Historic England, "19 Hill Street, W1 (1357120)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 20 March 2018
  28. "Elizabeth Montagu", The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 760, ISBN 9780521831796
  29. Pevsner, Nikolaus (1968), "The Architectural Setting of Jane Austen's Novels", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 31: 404–422, doi:10.2307/750649, JSTOR 750649
  30. Wiltshire, John (2003), "Exploring Mansfield Park: In the footsteps of Fanny Price" (PDF), Persuasions (28): 86
  31. Cunningham, George Hamilton (1927), "Hill Street, Berkeley Square", London: Being a Comprehensive Survey of the History, Tradition & Historical Associations of Buildings & Monuments, Arranged Under Streets in Alphabetical Order, J. M. Dent & Sons, p. 348
  32. Wilkes, Roger (29 May 2002), "Sly smile at the vile", The Daily Telegraph
  33. Mosley, Charlotte (2012). The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters. HarperCollins. p. 290. ISBN 9780007369171.
  34. Historic England. "Two bollards at North East and South East corners of junction with Chesterfield Hill, Hill Street W1 Mayfair (1066632)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 13 October 2013.
  35. Historic England. "2 bollards at South East and South West corners of Hill Street intersection with South Audley Street W1 (1264577)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 13 October 2013.
  36. Geraldine Edith Mitton (1903), Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater, ISBN 9781465532039
  37. Wheatley, Henry Benjamin (2011), "Hill Street", London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, Vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, p. 215, ISBN 9781108028073
  38. Tute, Warren (1983). The True Glory, The Story of the Royal Navy over a thousand years. Macdonald & Co. pp. 81–83. ISBN 0-356-10403-6.
  39. "Garnet Wolseley (1833-1913) Autograph Letter Signed". Owen and Barlow. Retrieved 21 July 2014.

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