Mount Street – Mayfair's terracotta street from the 1880s

Mount Street in Mayfair was completely rebuilt between 1880 and 1900 and given façades of red brick and terracotta. Today it is home to an oyster restaurant dating from the 1850s, a gunmaker in a Queen Anne house and one of London's most beloved small parks.

Mount Street runs east–west through Mayfair in London, from Park Lane in the west to Davies Street in the east, with Berkeley Square and Carlos Place at the eastern end. It is a street to look up at: above the shop windows rise façades in red brick and terracotta with bay windows, gables and small turrets, in an architecture that feels more French than English.

From workhouse to the duke's grand façades

Originally, Mount Street was a street of shops and crafts serving the fine neighbourhoods to its north and south. According to the Survey of London, it had a workhouse and noisy, dirty trades, and the street never had Bond Street's glamour. That changed when the first Duke of Westminster, who owned the land through the Grosvenor Estate, decided to rebuild it.

Between 1880 and 1900, Mount Street was rebuilt in its entirety, as decorative terraces with shops at street level and gentlemen's flats or houses above. The street is still the Grosvenor Estate's centre for certain kinds of trade, writes the Survey of London.

Brick and terracotta – the architects behind Mount Street

The architecture is the street's greatest attraction. Numbers 104–111 were designed by Ernest George and Peto and built in 1886–87; the style ranges from French Flamboyant at 104–108 to early French Renaissance at 109–111, with terracotta from Doulton and from J. C. Edwards of Ruabon. Numbers 87–102, built in stages between 1889 and 1895 to designs by Albert J. Bolton, are in French Renaissance style in red brick with richly decorated terracotta.

Furthest to the east, at number 130 on the corner towards Berkeley Square, stands a Queen Anne-style house from 1880–82 by J. T. Wimperis, with a copper-clad corner tower. Numbers 125–129, from 1886–87, are in yellow brick with light terracotta. At number 117, the butcher Edgar Green received the duke's support to hang meat in the shop window – a detail that says a great deal about how carefully the duke controlled the street's appearance.

Scott's at 20 Mount Street

The street's most famous restaurant is Scott's, which started out as "Scott's oyster rooms" in the Haymarket in the 1850s, became Scott's Oyster and Supper Rooms on Coventry Street in 1891, and moved to 20 Mount Street in 1967. The restaurant was a favourite of the James Bond author Ian Fleming and is today part of Caprice Holdings, which also owns The Ivy.

Purdey at Audley House

On the corner of Mount Street and South Audley Street stands Audley House, home of the gunmaker James Purdey & Sons since 1 January 1883. The Queen Anne-style house was designed by William Lambert. Its Long Room was planned as James Purdey the Younger's office, with a light well through which he could see the workshop below, and in 1942 a meeting was held here at which early planning for D-Day was discussed, according to Purdey.

Mount Street Gardens and Farm Street

South of the middle of the street lies Mount Street Gardens, a tranquil park with lawns, trees and benches. Behind it stands the Jesuits' Church of the Immaculate Conception on Farm Street, built in 1844–49, and at 114 Mount Street the Jesuits' terracotta presbytery from 1886–87.

At the eastern end of the street, on the corner of Carlos Place, stands The Connaught, and outside the hotel is Tadao Ando's water sculpture Silence. Winston Churchill lived for a time at 105 Mount Street, and in fiction, both Biggles and Bunny Manders from the Raffles stories had their flats here.

Mount Street and Mayfair in VERA PI

See the streets in VERA PI's street files for Mount Street, South Audley Street, Carlos Place and Mount Row, or start in VERA PI's London guide.

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