London’s Alleys: Albion Mews, W2
This is a charming, plant-filled mews alley just north of Hyde Park, sitting next to a former and once very large cemetery.
The area first started developing in the late 1790s, when St George’s church in Hanover Square bought a large plot of land north of Hyde Park to use as an overflow cemetery.
Not long afterwards, housing started spreading around the area as well, and much of the street pattern was settled in the 1820s as part of a long-term plan by the architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell to develop the Hyde Park Estate into a fashionable residential area called Tyburnia. He laid out the estate but died in 1827, so most of the actual construction was by George Gutch.
The mews were built behind the main street houses facing onto Albion Street to provide space for horse stables and servants quarters. As with so many mews, the arrival of the motor car and changes in domestic living meant no need for stables or servants, so the stables were sold off to become private homes.
Today, it’s a quiet haven of peace that is also clearly much loved by the residents, who have spilled out of their mews homes onto the cobbled path outside and filled the space with plants.
Entry is through a covered archway leading to the mews, and at the far end is the gate to a private park. That’s the former cemetery, which was deconsecrated in 1854 and was used for a while as tennis courts and archery fields by the Royal Toxophilite Society until it was sold in 1967 by the Church Commissioners to be built upon by The Utopian Housing Association, a housing trust.
Walking down the mews, though, it’s lined with a mix of soft palate homes and oh so much planting everywhere, including a huge bamboo-type plant with a chain stopping it, completely covering the whole path.
Dame Lucie Rie, an Austrian-born British studio potter, lived and worked at 18 Albion Mews until her death in 1939. A blue Plaque was later added to the building. In 1982, one of the mews houses was advertised for sale for £105,000 — today you’d need to ten times as much to buy the same home.
Albion Mews looks absolutely lovely, and this series in general is one of the few things I look forward to on a Monday morning. I had no idea that Lucie Rie, one of my favourite artists, lived there. It’s worth mentioning perhaps that she died much more recently than stated, in 1995.
Lucien Rie died in 1995.
I was at the Archives on Show event at the London Archives on Friday which was dedicated to maps. I was looking at the Greenwood maps of 1824, 1825 and 1826 and specifically the Tyburnia area, strangely enough, and was intrigued by the burial ground, so it was great to see your article about it. The streets had been laid out but the houses had not yet been built. I don’t think I can post my photo of the map here, but I am sure you know it.