Hampstead and Marylebone

by G. E. Mitton

In Blandford Square there is a convent which has survived the general wreck. It was first established near Queen's Square, Bloomsbury, in 1844, and was opened on its present site in 1851.

The House of Mercy is for servants out of work, who do laundry and other work, and so contribute to their own support. There are thirty Sisters, who, besides attending to the home, do much charitable work in teaching and the visitation of the sick.

Dorset Square was built on the site of the original Lord's Cricket Ground. It was made by one Thomas Lord at the end of the eighteenth century, and, as stated above, in 1814 the present ground was substituted, so Dorset Square can claim only a small connection with the famous game. The streets leading northward from Dorset Square are of little interest. In Hill Street is a small Baptist place of worship. In Park Street is St. Cyprian's little church, opened in 1866.

The last house on the east side of Upper Baker Street bears one of the Society of Arts memorial tablets to the memory of Mrs. Siddons, who lived here intermittently for many years. She used to give readings from Shakespeare to her friends in this house, and here in 1831 she died. The house is now called "Siddons House Private Hotel."

In the Marylebone Road, close to the underground station, stands Madame Tussaud's famous waxwork exhibition, the delight of children and visitors from the country. The waxworks were begun in Paris in 1780, and brought to London in 1802 to the place where the Lyceum Theatre now stands, and afterwards were removed to Hanover Square rooms.

On the west side of Park Road are the terraces abutting on Regent's Park. Some of these terraces show fine design, though in the solid, cumbrous style of the Georgian period. Hanover Terrace was designed by Nash, and also Sussex Place, which was named after the Duke of Sussex. The latter is laid out in a semicircle, and is crowned by cupolas and minarets. The houses are very large, and, in spite of fashion having deserted the district, can still show a goodly list of inhabitants.

The district lying to the west of Sussex Grove and Grove Road is the poorest and most miserable in the borough. In Grove Road is a Home for Female Orphans, a large gabled building. The girls are received here at six years of age, and pass on to service when about sixteen. The little village of Lisson Green stood out in the country not far from the great Roman Road, the present Edgware Road (see p. [58]), and it formed the nucleus round which houses and streets sprang up. From the Marylebone Road to St. John's Wood Road the streets are poor and squalid, abounding in low courts and alleys. Several great Board Schools in the neighbourhood of Great James Street rise up prominently, and round about them neat lines of workmen's houses are gradually replacing the wretched tenements. The district is still miserable, but it has bettered its notoriously bad reputation of ten or twenty years ago.

St. Barnabas Church, near Bell Street, was built by Blomfield, and is in a kind of French Gothic. Christ Church, in Stafford Street, not far off, is surmounted by a cupola, and built in the classical style. It was the work of P. Hardwick in 1825.

Earl Street is a long, dreary, but fairly respectable thoroughfare. The Marylebone Theatre or Music Hall is in Church Street. This was opened in 1842 as a penny theatre, and enlarged in 1854. In Church Street there is also a Baptist chapel.

Salisbury and Carlisle Streets are indescribably dingy. In the latter is St. Matthew's Church, which has the (perhaps) unique distinction of having been built for a theatre. It was consecrated in 1853, and restored forty years later. Close by the church, between the two streets mentioned above, is the Portman Market. This was opened as a hay-market in 1830, and the year following was dedicated to general uses. The market is still held on Friday every week. Smith speaks of it as bidding "fair to become a formidable rival to Covent Garden," a prophecy which has not been fulfilled. There is another Board School of great size between two miserable little streets on the east, and another a little further north between Grove Road and Capland Street.