The Era of Empire and War
- Restoration to Regency
- The Era of Empire and War
- The Blitz
- Swinging London
- A Cultural Shift
- The Quiet Revolution
The Reception Room at Montagu House in 1894
Photo: Courtesy of National Building Records
With the introduction of death duties in 1893, the great aristocratic Estates had begun to be broken up. Mayfair’s great mansions nearly all fell victim after the First World War. In 1919 the Marquess of Salisbury sold his Arlington Street home; Rochester House and Grosvenor House (the Duke of Wellington’s town house) in Park Lane were pulled down in the 1920s, to be replaced by hotels of the same name. Nash’s Regent Street shop fronts were also demolished. Chesterfield House in South Audley Street gave way in the 1930s to flats. Protests arose against the commercialisation and vulgarisation of dignified London by rapacious developers. E. M. Forster was not alone when he declared: ‘Greed moulds the landscape of London.’
Commercial pressures over the past one hundred years have brought about a dilution in the original largely residential content of the area. Many of the architecturally fine buildings remain, although rarely in single-family occupation, but in use as residential conversions, private hotels, and commercial premises. During this period of change the Estate and local planners have tried to preserve the architectural style of the area. The essential theme of the architecture is late Georgian or Regency with the facades of many newer schemes representing those periods.
With thanks to Conrad Keating