Marylebone

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Marylebone
Middlesex

Marylebone High Street
Location
Grid reference: TQ285815
Location: 51°31’4"N, 0°8’49"W
Data
Post town: London
Postcode: W1
Dialling code: 020
Local Government
Council: City of Westminster
Parliamentary
constituency: 		Cities of London
and Westminster

Marylebone is an affluent, area of the West End of London. It is sometimes written as St Marylebone or Mary-le-bone.

Marylebone is entirely contiguous on all sides with the London urban area. It can roughly be defined as bounded by Oxford Street to the south, Marylebone Road to the north, Edgware Road to the west and Great Portland Street to the east[1]. A broader definition designates the historic area as Marylebone Village and encompasses neighbouring Regent's Park, Baker Street and the area immediately north of Marylebone Road, containing Marylebone Station, the original site of the Marylebone Cricket Club at Dorset Square, and the neighbourhood known as Lisson Grove to the border with St John's Wood.

Today the area is mostly residential. Many medical and dental offices are found there, traditionally concentrated in Harley Street and neighbouring streets. Since the opening of the Jubilee Line at Baker Street Station, Marylebone - particularly Marylebone Village - has become an even more sought-after area of London.

Marylebone High Street

Marylebone High Street may be the closest to a perfect village high street in the heart of London. The street, along with much of Marylebone, is owned by the Howard de Walden Estate and is actively managed to ensure a range of shops.

History

Marylebone gets its name from a church dedicated to St Mary, represented now by St Marylebone Parish Church (1817). The original church stood on the bank of a small stream or "bourne", the Tyburn,[2]. The Tyburn is now entirely culverted, but it rises in what is now Swiss Cottage and ran along what is now Marylebone Lane, which preserves its curve within the grid pattern. The church and the surrounding area later became known as St Mary at the Bourne which, over time, became shortened to its present form, Marylebone.[3] It is a common misunderstanding that the name is a corruption of Marie la Bonne (French for "Marie/Mary the good").

The manor of Tyburn is mentioned in the Domesday Book (1086) as a possession of Barking Abbey, valued at 52 shillings, with a population no greater than fifty people.

Early in the thirteenth century the manor was held by Robert de Vere, 3rd Earl of Oxford. At the end of the fifteenth century Thomas Hobson bought up the greater part of the manor; in 1544 his son Thomas exchanged it with Henry VIII,[4] who enclosed the northern part of the manor as a deer park, the distant origin of Regent's Park. Tyburn manor remained with the Crown until the southern part was sold in 1611 by James I to Edward Forest,[5] who had held it at a fixed rental under Elizabeth I. Forset's manor of Marylebone then passed by marriage into the family of Austen.

The deer park, Marylebone Park Fields, had been retained by James I, and was later let out in smallholdings for hay and dairy produce.[6]

In 1710, John Holles, Duke of Newcastle bought the manor for £17,500[7], from whom it was inherited by his daughter and heiress, Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, who married the Earl of Oxford. The Earl and Countess of Oxford realised the opportunities for fashionable housing north of the Oxford Road, and commissioned the surveyor and builder John Prince to draw a master plan that set Cavendish Square in a rational grid system of streets. The street-names bear witness to this development, for example Harley Street (after the Earl's family name), Wigmore Street (after his subsidiary title), Henrietta Place and others.

When the Harley heiress Lady Margaret Cavendish Harley married William, 2nd Duke of Portland, this took the property, including Marylebone High Street, into the Bentinck family. Such place names in the neighbourhood as Cavendish Square and Portland Place reflect the landholdings of the Dukes of Portland and Georgian-era developments there. In 1879 the fifth Duke died without issue and the estate passed through the female line to his sister, Lucy Joan Bentinck, widow of the 6th Baron Howard de Walden.

A large part of the area directly to the west was constructed by the Portman family and is known as the Portman Estate. Both estates have aristocratic antecedents and are still run by members of the aforementioned families. The Howard de Walden Estate owns, leases and manages the majority of the 92 acres of real estate in Marylebone which comprises the area from Marylebone High Street in the west to Robert Adam’s Portland Place in the east and from Wigmore Street in the south to Marylebone Road in the north.[8]

In the 18th century the area was known for the raffish entertainments of Marylebone Gardens, scene of bear-baiting and prizefights by members of both sexes, and for the duelling grounds in Marylebone Fields.[9] The Crown repurchased the northern part of the estate in 1813.

The Metropolitan Borough of St Marylebone was a metropolitan borough between 1899 and 1965, after which, it was merged with the Metropolitan Boroughs of Paddington and Westminster to create the City of Westminster.

Sights in Marylebone

St Marylebone Parish Church
  • All Souls Church, Langham Place (designed by John Nash)
  • Asia House, New Cavendish Street
  • Baker Street
  • Bryanston Square
  • Broadcasting House (BBC headquarters)
  • The Colomb Art Gallery
  • Duke Street, Marylebone
  • Hinde Street Methodist Chapel
  • Holy Trinity Church Marylebone (designed by Sir John Soane)
  • Langham Hotel, London (built in the 1860s)
  • Marylebone High Street
  • Madame Tussaud's
  • Manchester Square (Georgian square)
  • Montagu Square (Regency square)
  • University of Westminster
  • Royal Academy of Music
  • Royal Institute of British Architects
  • Harley Street
  • Regent's Park (which houses the London Zoo)
  • St Marylebone Parish Church
  • Selfridges Department Store
  • Hyde Park, London|Hyde Park
  • Marybone Chapel (designed in 1722 by James Gibbs)
  • Wallace Collection
  • Wigmore Hall
  • Marble Arch
  • Wigmore Street
  • West London Mission at 19 Thayer Street
  • Wyndham Place

References

  1. ↑ Marylebone Association
  2. ↑ ""Maryburne rill", in Harrison's Description of England 1586, noted by Henry Benjamin Wheatley and Peter Cunningham, London, Past and Present: its history, associations, and traditions, Volume 2, p. 509.
  3. ↑ Smith, Thomas (1833). A Topographical and Historical Account of the Parish of St. Mary-le-Bone. London: John Smith. pp. 3. http://books.google.com/books?id=Xw4NAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=%22st+mary+at+the+bourne%22&source=web&ots=To45uiuZI_&sig=gCI4P0v5VIYpOWFhHygnHoerIb8&hl=en#PPA3,M1. 
  4. ↑ Wheatley and Cunningham, p. 509.
  5. ↑ 'The Regent's Park', Old and New London 5 (1878:262-286);dDate accessed: 03 July 2010
  6. ↑ Weinreb, B. and Hibbert, C. (ed) (1995) The London Encyclopedia Macmillan ISBN 0 333 57688 8
  7. ↑ Wheatley and Cunningham; they note the annual rents brought in £900.
  8. ↑ The Howard de Walden Estate
  9. ↑ Wheatley and Cunningham, p. 511.

Outside links

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