Argyll Street is a street in the Soho district of Central London. It links Great Marlborough Street to the south to Oxford Street in the north and is connected to Regent Street to the west by Little Argyll Street. Historically it was sometimes written as Argyle Street.
The street takes its name from John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll who bought a large property on the south side of Oxford Street in the early 18th century. In 1736 Argyll chose to demolish his house and to create Argyll Street as a residential street with a number of smaller townhouses on the site, designed by the architect James Gibbs. His younger brother Archibald had built a nearby mansion named Argyll House. This was not redeveloped when the street was constructed, and it passed through the hands of various Dukes of Argyll until 1808. [1] The future Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister Lord Aberdeen bought Argyll House and made it his London residence for many years. [2] Following Aberdeen's death in 1860, Argyll House was demolished and the site redeveloped, eventually becoming a West End theatre, the London Palladium. [3]
The Argyll Arms was rebuilt in 1868 on the site of an 18th century pub. [4] In 1905 an entrance to the new Bakerloo Line section of Oxford Circus tube station was opened on the corner with Oxford Street adjacent to the pub. It was designed by Leslie Green in the oxblood Modern Style common to many underground stations of the era. At the southern end of the street the art deco Ideal House was built in the 1920s.
Notable residents in the street have included William Roy, the pioneer of the Ordnance Survey, and the writers Washington Irving and Germaine de Staël, all of whom are commemorated with blue plaques. [5] [6] [7]
In addition the botanist Joseph Banks was born there in 1743 [8] while the British statesman and future Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder married his wife Hester at her lodgings in Argyll Street in 1754. [9]
Brian Epstein (1934–1967) managed the Beatles and other artists from his NEMS Enterprises offices at Sutherland House 5–6 Argyll Street from 1964, the high tide of Beatlemania, until his death in 1967.
George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen,, styled Lord Haddo from 1791 to 1801, was a British statesman, diplomat and landowner, successively a Tory, Conservative and Peelite politician and specialist in foreign affairs. He served as Prime Minister from 1852 until 1855 in a coalition between the Whigs and Peelites, with Radical and Irish support. The Aberdeen ministry was filled with powerful and talented politicians, whom Aberdeen was largely unable to control and direct. Despite his trying to avoid this happening, it took Britain into the Crimean War, and fell when its conduct became unpopular, after which Aberdeen retired from politics.
William Henry Cavendish Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, was a British Whig and then a Tory politician during the late Georgian era. He served as chancellor of the University of Oxford (1792–1809) and as Prime Minister of Great Britain (1783) and then of the United Kingdom (1807–1809). The gap of 26 years between his two terms as prime minister is the longest of any British prime minister. He was also the fourth great-grandfather of King Charles III through his great-granddaughter Cecilia Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne.
Harley Street is a street in Marylebone, Central London, named after Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer. Since the 19th century it has housed a large number of private specialists in medicine and surgery.
The St James's Theatre was in King Street, St James's, London. It opened in 1835 and was demolished in 1957. The theatre was conceived by and built for a popular singer, John Braham; it lost money and after three seasons he retired. A succession of managements over the next forty years also failed to make it a commercial success, and the St James's acquired a reputation as an unlucky theatre. It was not until 1879–1888, under the management of the actors John Hare and Madge and W. H. Kendal that the theatre began to prosper.
The Opera Comique was a 19th-century theatre constructed in Westminster, London, located between Wych Street, Holywell Street and the Strand. It opened in 1870 and was demolished in 1902, to make way for the construction of the Aldwych and Kingsway.
Baker Street is a street in the Marylebone district of the City of Westminster in London. It is named after builder William Baker, who laid out the street in the 18th century. The street is most famous for its connection to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, who lived at a fictional 221B Baker Street address on the north of the street. The area was originally high class residential, but now is mainly occupied by commercial premises.
His Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre situated in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster, London. The building, designed by Charles J. Phipps, was constructed in 1897 for the actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) at the theatre. In the early decades of the 20th century Tree produced spectacular productions of Shakespeare and other classical works, and the theatre hosted premieres by such playwrights as Bernard Shaw, J. M. Synge and, later, Noël Coward and J. B. Priestley. Since the First World War the wide stage has made the theatre suitable for large-scale musical productions, and His Majesty's has accordingly specialised in hosting musicals. It has been home to record-setting musical theatre runs such as the First World War hit Chu Chin Chow and Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, which has run at His Majesty's since 1986, except during the COVID-19 pandemic theatre closures.
St James's Square is the only square in the St James's district of the City of Westminster and is a garden square. It has predominantly Georgian and Neo-Georgian architecture. For its first two hundred or so years it was one of the three or four most fashionable residential streets in London. It now has headquarters of a number of well-known businesses, including BP and Rio Tinto Group; four private members' clubs, the East India Club, the Naval and Military Club, the Canning Club, and the Army and Navy Club; the High Commission of Cyprus; the London Library; and global think tank and peace-promoter Chatham House.
Eaton Square is a rectangular, residential garden square in London's Belgravia district. It is the largest square in London. It is one of the three squares built by the landowning Grosvenor family when they developed the main part of Belgravia in the 19th century that are named after places in Cheshire — in this case Eaton Hall, the Grosvenor country house. It is larger but less grand than the central feature of the district, Belgrave Square, and both larger and grander than Chester Square. The first block was laid out by Thomas Cubitt from 1827. In 2016 it was named as the "Most Expensive Place to Buy Property in Britain", with a full terraced house costing on average £17 million — many of such town houses have been converted, within the same, protected structures, into upmarket apartments.
The Lyric Theatre is a West End theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. It was built for the producer Henry Leslie, who financed it from the profits of the light opera hit, Dorothy, which he transferred from its original venue to open the new theatre on 17 December 1888.
Lisson Grove is a street and district in the City of Westminster, West London. The West End neighbourhood contains a few important cultural landmarks, including Lisson Gallery, Alfies Antique Market, Red Bus Recording Studios, the former Christ Church, now the Greenhouse Centre, and the Seashell of Lisson Grove.
Daly's Theatre was a theatre in the City of Westminster. It was located at 2 Cranbourn Street, just off Leicester Square. It opened on 27 June 1893, and was demolished in 1937.
The Mander family has held for over 200 years a prominent position in the Midland counties of England, both in the family business and public life. In the early industrial revolution, the Mander family entered the vanguard of the expansion of Wolverhampton, on the edge of the largest manufacturing conurbation in the British Isles. Mander Brothers was a major employer in the city of Wolverhampton, a progressive company which became the Number One manufacturers of varnish, paint and later printing ink in the British Empire. The family became distinguished for public service, art patronage and philanthropy. Charles Tertius Mander (1852–1929) was created the first baronet of The Mount in the baronetage of the United Kingdom in the Coronation honours of George V, on 8 July 1911.
The Globe was a Victorian theatre built in 1868 and demolished in 1902. It was the third of five London theatres to bear the name, following Shakespeare’s Bankside house, which closed in 1642, and the former Rotunda Theatre in Blackfriars Road, which for a few years from 1833 was renamed the Globe. The new theatre was also known at various times as the Royal Globe Theatre or Globe Theatre Royal. Its repertoire consisted mainly of comedies and musical shows.
Dollis Hill House was an early 19th-century house also known as Dollis Hill Villa in today's north London suburb of Dollis Hill. Most of its gardens, south, form Gladstone Park and its owners were the freeholders of the farm estate, north, Dollis Hill Farm which together occupied the eminence, known as Dollis Hill, along with part of Willesden Paddocks in the parish of that name. Guests such as William Ewart Gladstone and Mark Twain were entertained there. The house became derelict after successive fire damage in 1995, 1996 and 2011, the last of which being the basement. As such the building was demolished in 2012 but a performance centre sits on its footprint. Dollis Hill House was an initial-class listed building and reached grade A on the English Heritage Buildings at Risk Register.
Toole's Theatre, was a 19th-century West End building in William IV Street, near Charing Cross, in the City of Westminster. A succession of auditoria had occupied the site since 1832, serving a variety of functions, including religious and leisure activities. The theatre at its largest, after reconstruction in 1881–82, had a capacity of between 650 and 700.
The Metropolitan Theatre was a London music hall and theatre in Edgware Road, Paddington. Its origins were in an old inn on the site where entertainments became increasingly prominent by the early 19th century. A new theatre was built there in 1836, replaced in 1897 by a new building designed by the theatre architect Frank Matcham. The Metropolitan was a leading theatre for music hall and variety, but with the decline of the latter in the mid-20th century it struggled to survive, and was demolished in 1964 to make way for a road-widening scheme.
Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson were theatre historians and joint founders of a large collection of theatrical memorabilia.
Bruton Street is a street in London's Mayfair district.
Argyll House was a historic residence in London just south of Oxford Street on the present-day Argyll Street. It was originally the London townhouse of the Dukes of Argyll, a prominent Scottish family, before later passing into the hands of the nineteenth century politician Lord Aberdeen after considerable redevelopment.