Albemarle Street
Encyclopedia
Mayfair
Mayfair is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...
in central London
Central London
Central London is the innermost part of London, England. There is no official or commonly accepted definition of its area, but its characteristics are understood to include a high density built environment, high land values, an elevated daytime population and a concentration of regionally,...
, off Piccadilly
Piccadilly
Piccadilly is a major street in central London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is completely within the city of Westminster. The street is part of the A4 road, London's second most important western artery. St...
. It has historic associations with Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
, whose publisher John Murray
John Murray (publisher)
John Murray is an English publisher, renowned for the authors it has published in its history, including Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Byron, Charles Lyell, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Melville, and Charles Darwin...
was based here, and Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, a member of the Albemarle Club
Albemarle Club
The Albemarle Club was a private members' club at 13 Albemarle Street, London, founded in 1874 and open to both men and women. It was considered more bohemian in character than the more prestigious clubs of the day....
, where an insult he received led to his suing for libel and to his eventual imprisonment. It is also known for its art galleries and the Brown's Hotel
Brown's Hotel
Brown's Hotel is a luxury 5-star hotel in London, United Kingdom. Opening its doors in 1837, it has been owned by The Rocco Forte Collection since 3 July 2003 and is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World....
is located at 33 Albemarle Street.
History
Albemarle Street was built by a syndicate of developers headed by Sir Thomas Bond. The syndicate purchased a Piccadilly mansion called Clarendon HouseClarendon House
Clarendon House was a town mansion which stood on Piccadilly in London, England from the 1660s to the 1680s. It was built for the powerful politician Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon and was the grandest private London residence of its era.-History:...
from Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle
Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle
Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle, KG, PC was an English statesman and failed soldier.He was the son of George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle....
in 1683 and proceeded to demolish the house and develop the area. At that time the house backed onto open fields and the development of the various estates in Mayfair was just getting underway. The syndicate also built Bond Street
Bond Street
Bond Street is a major shopping street in the West End of London that runs north-south through Mayfair between Oxford Street and Piccadilly. It has been a fashionable shopping street since the 18th century and is currently the home of many high price fashion shops...
and Dover Street
Dover Street
Dover Street is a street in Mayfair, London, England. The street is notable for its Georgian architecture as well as the location of historic London clubs and hotels, which have been frequented by world leaders and historic figures in the arts. It also hosts a number of contemporary art galleries...
.
Albemarle Street was the first one way street in London, aimed at better traffic flow. The occasion prompting this decision was a series of lectures given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
at the Royal Institute . The resulting traffic jams caused by those eager to attend resulted in such horrendous queues of horsedrawn carriages
Hansom cab
The hansom cab is a kind of horse-drawn cart designed and patented in 1834 by Joseph Hansom, an architect from York. The vehicle was developed and tested by Hansom in Hinckley, Leicestershire, England. Originally called the Hansom safety cab, it was designed to combine speed with safety, with a low...
that the measure was quickly adopted to remove the congestion.
Occupants
.jpg)
Victor Spencer, 1st Viscount Churchill
Major Victor Albert Francis Charles Spencer, 1st Viscount Churchill GCVO JP , known as The Lord Churchill between 1886 and 1902, was a British peer and courtier....
(1864–1934), a Page of Honour
Page of Honour
While a page is a comparatively low-ranking servant, a Page of Honour is a ceremonial position in the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. It requires attendance on state occasions, but does not now involve the daily duties which were once attached to the office of page...
to Queen Victoria and British peer, was born at 32 Albemarle Street.
Anne Lister
Anne Lister
Anne Lister was a well-off Yorkshire landowner, diarist, mountaineer and traveller.Throughout her life she kept diaries which chronicled the details of her everyday life, including her lesbian relationships, her financial concerns, her industrial activities and her work improving Shibden Hall...
(1791–1840), a notable Victorian lesbian, stayed at 29 Albemarle Street in rooms owned by Hawkins, who also had premises in Dover Street
Dover Street
Dover Street is a street in Mayfair, London, England. The street is notable for its Georgian architecture as well as the location of historic London clubs and hotels, which have been frequented by world leaders and historic figures in the arts. It also hosts a number of contemporary art galleries...
.
The Albemarle Club
Albemarle Club
The Albemarle Club was a private members' club at 13 Albemarle Street, London, founded in 1874 and open to both men and women. It was considered more bohemian in character than the more prestigious clubs of the day....
was originally in Albemarle Street and relocated to Dover Street nearby before its closure. Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
was a member. In 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry
Marquess of Queensberry
Marquess of Queensberry is a title in the peerage of Scotland. The title has been held since its creation in 1682 by a member of the Douglas family...
left his calling card for Wilde with the infamous note "For Oscar Wilde, posing as a somdomite" (sic). This led to Wilde's failed libel action and subsequent criminal prosecution.
The publisher John Murray
John Murray (publisher)
John Murray is an English publisher, renowned for the authors it has published in its history, including Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Byron, Charles Lyell, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Melville, and Charles Darwin...
was located at 50 Albemarle Street in Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
times and during the 20th century. Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
's letters were destroyed in the fireplace on the first floor after his death. Sir John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
, the poet and broadcaster was another Murray author.
Frenchman Alexander Grillion opened Grillion's Hotel at No. 7 in 1803. Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
stayed here in 1814, before his return to France. It was also the meeting place of Grillion's
Grillion's
Grillion's is a London dining club founded in 1812. It was founded by the British diplomat Stratford Canning as a meeting place free from the violence of political controversy. The club had no premises but met at Grillion's Hotel on Albemarle Street, from which it took its name. Later it would...
dining club. The Royal Thames Yacht Club
Royal Thames Yacht Club
The Royal Thames Yacht Club is the oldest sailing club in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are located at 60 Knightsbridge, London, England, overlooking Hyde Park....
was later based here.
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
is located at 21 Albemarle Street and forms an imposing backdrop on the street with its row of classical columns on its frontage. The building has been greatly enlarged and redeveloped since 1799 when the Institution was founded, and is now a Grade I listed building. Because of the Institution's popularity (through its scientific lectures), Albemarle Street became London's first one-way street to avoid traffic problems.
The naturalist Thomas Huxley
Thomas Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley PC FRS was an English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution....
founded the X Club
X Club
The X Club was a dining club of nine men who supported the theories of natural selection and academic liberalism in late 19th-century England. Thomas Henry Huxley was the initiator: he called the first meeting for November 3, 1864...
as a dining club meeting for the first time on 3 November 1864 at St George's Hotel, Albemarle Street, with a select membership of nine proponents of the evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
ary "new reformation" in naturalism who supported the ideas of Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
and became increasingly influential in late 19th century science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
.
In the 1950s, Ernö Goldfinger
Erno Goldfinger
Ernő Goldfinger was a Hungarian-born Jewish architect and designer of furniture, and a key member of the architectural Modern Movement after he had moved to the United Kingdom.-Biography:Goldfinger was born in Budapest...
's design for two office buildings at 45–46 Albemarle Street was praised for its sensitivity to the surrounding Georgian architecture.
Garrard, who made Princess Diana`s engagement ring
Engagement ring
An engagement ring is a ring indicating that the person wearing it is engaged to be married, especially in Western cultures. In the United Kingdom, Ireland and North America, engagement rings are traditionally worn only by women, and rings can feature diamonds or other gemstones. In other cultures...
, has a shop here.
Galleries
.jpg)
- Connaught Brown, 2 Albemarle Street
- The Archeus Gallery, 3 Albemarle Street
- Marlborough Fine Art, 6 Albemarle Street
- Phillips de Pury & Company, 25–26 Albemarle Street
- The Grosvenor Gallery, 37 Albemarle Street
- John Martin of London, 38 Albemarle Street
- The Belgravia Gallery, 45 Albemarle Street
- The Albemarle Gallery, 49 Albemarle Street
- Faggionato Fine Arts, 49 Albemarle Street (first floor)
- W. H. Patterson Fine Arts, 19 Albemarle Street
Location
To the south-east, the street adjoins PiccadillyPiccadilly
Piccadilly is a major street in central London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is completely within the city of Westminster. The street is part of the A4 road, London's second most important western artery. St...
. Running parallel with Albemarle Street to the south-west is Dover Street
Dover Street
Dover Street is a street in Mayfair, London, England. The street is notable for its Georgian architecture as well as the location of historic London clubs and hotels, which have been frequented by world leaders and historic figures in the arts. It also hosts a number of contemporary art galleries...
and to the north-east are New Bond Street and Old Bond Street. The nearest tube station is Green Park
Green Park tube station
Green Park tube station is a London Underground station located on the north side of Green Park, close to the intersection of Piccadilly and the pedestrian Queen's Walk...
.
See also
- Duke of AlbemarleDuke of AlbemarleThe Dukedom of Albemarle has been created twice in the Peerage of England, each time ending in extinction. Additionally, the title was created a third time by James II in exile and a fourth time by his son the Old Pretender, in the Jacobite Peerage. The name is the Latinised form of the ancient...
- Earl of AlbemarleEarl of AlbemarleEarl of Albemarle is a title created several times from Norman times onwards. The word Albemarle is the Latinised form of the French county of Aumale in Normandy , other forms being Aubemarle and Aumerle...
- List of eponymous roads in London