This article is about the street in Mayfair. For other Hill Streets, see
Hill Street.
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.
Development and architecture
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 No.s17 and 19
c.1748,[5] and
Oliver Hill, as to No.15 in the 1920s.[6]
Claud Phillimore refurbished No.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: No.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] No.19 is Grade II*; No.17 has the highest status, Grade I.[26][27]
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
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]
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.
This was among the prestigious streets of wealthy London socialites and politicians in the 18th and 19th centuries, and notable residents have included:
^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