London’s Alleys: Shepherds Place, W1

This is a posh looking alley in Mayfair that has been around since the area developed some 300 years ago, and was likely originally provided access to the stables behind a row of grander houses.

The alley first shows up as an unnamed passage north of Brook Street in John Roque’s map of London in 1746

R Horwood’s map first names it, as Shepherds Court, and is partially lined with small houes that back onto the larger gardens owned by the grander houses facing onto Brook Street.

A century later and the gardens have largely gone, replaced by larger and grander houses, although the smaller houses facing into the alley itself mostly survived.

By then it had also gained its current name of Shepherds Place.

The name of the alley comes from the plasterer John Shepherd who was responsible for much of the building that took place there in the 1730’s and early 1740’s.

The building on the southeastern corner is a terraced house dating from 1732, and is the oldest building in the alley. It’s now Grade II listed by Historic England.

Opposite looks to be a fairly generic row of Georgian flats, but are notable for being a conversion job by none other thann Richard Gilbert Scott, who is much better known for his modernist buildings.

At the northern end is a row of father fine brick and plaster buildings — slightly confusingly having a street adress around the corner. The buildings though were built between 1890-91 by the Artisans’, Labourers’ and General Dwellings Company as working-class flats with ground floor shops to the designs of F.T. Pilkington.

They’re not particuarly working class now though.

Shepherds Place makes a fleeting appearance at the beginging of The Baron TV show episode You Can’t Win Them All, when Ronnie Osborne (John Cater) escapes from the Peerage Club and runs into Shepherds Place chased by two of Seftan Folkard’s heavies.

The alley gained a rather darker aspect though when it was used for an attempted terrorist attack in 1968.

On the evening of Friday 9th February 1968, the Greek Embassy, which was on the other side of the road from the alley, received call warning that a bomb had been planted in the embassy.

After searches failed to find anything, a second call claiming to be from the “committee for revolutionary solidarity” told the police to check the planters in Shepherds Place.

What they found was a home made missile hidden in the tub, pointing at the embassy building.

An embassy official told the Daily Express that they had noticed the planter in the alley and though it a nice touch and very pretty.

The terrorists were linked to far leftist groups who opposed the right wing military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974, but rather than wanting to replace it with a liberal democracy, they wanted a communist takeover of the country.

This part of Mayfair has been considerably quieter since then, and although the Greek Embassy has moved to Kensington, the building opposite Shepherds Place is still the Ambassadors’ residence, and occasionally open to the public.