Scotland Yard is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs. Its name derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had its main public entrance on the Westminster street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became the public entrance, and over time "Scotland Yard" came to be used not only as the common name of the headquarters building, but also as a metonym for the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) itself and police officers, especially detectives, who serve in it. The New York Times wrote in 1964 that, just as Wall Street gave its name to New York's financial district, Scotland Yard became the name for police activity in London.
Piccadilly is a road in the City of Westminster, London, England, to the south of Mayfair, between Hyde Park Corner in the west and Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is part of the A4 road that connects central London to Hammersmith, Earl's Court, Heathrow Airport and the M4 motorway westward. St James's is to the south of the eastern section, while the western section is built up only on the northern side. Piccadilly is just under 1 mile (1.6 km) in length, and it is one of the widest and straightest streets in central London.
The Palace of Placentia, also known as Greenwich Palace, was an English royal residence that was initially built by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in 1443. The palace was a place designed for pleasure, entertainment and an escape from the city. It was located at Greenwich on the south bank of the River Thames, downstream from London. On a hill behind the palace he built Duke Humphrey's Tower, later known as Greenwich Castle; it was subsequently demolished to make way for the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, which survives. The original river-side residence was extensively rebuilt around 1500 by Henry VII. A detached residence, the Queen's House, was built on the estate in the early 1600s and also survives. In 1660, the main palace was demolished by Charles II to make way for a proposed new palace, which was never constructed. Nearly forty years later, the Greenwich Hospital was built on the site.
Cheapside is a street in the City of London, the historic and modern financial centre of London, England, which forms part of the A40 London to Fishguard road. It links St. Martin's Le Grand with Poultry. Near its eastern end at Bank junction, where it becomes Poultry, is Mansion House, the Bank of England, and Bank station. To the west is St. Paul's Cathedral, St Paul's tube station and square.
Sir Norman Bishop Hartnell was a leading British fashion designer, best known for his work for the ladies of the royal family. Hartnell gained the Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth in 1940, and Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth II in 1957. Princess Beatrice also wore a dress designed for Queen Elizabeth II by Hartnell for her wedding in 2020.
Queen Square is a garden square in the Bloomsbury district of central London. Many of its buildings are associated with medicine, particularly neurology.
Devonshire House in Piccadilly, was the London townhouse of the Dukes of Devonshire during the 18th and 19th centuries. Following a fire in 1733 it was rebuilt by William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire, in the Palladian style, to designs by William Kent. Completed circa 1740, it stood empty after the First World War and was demolished in 1924.
Hanover Square is a square with a public park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is triangular in shape, formed by the intersections of Pearl Street and Hanover Street; Pearl Street and a street named "Hanover Square" itself (whose opposite side of Pearl continues as Hanover St.; and William Street and Stone Street. The side between Hanover/Pearl intersection and William/Stone intersection is a pedestrian pathway along the building front facing the square and Pearl Street. Most surrounding buildings are primarily commercial.
Portman Square is a garden square in Marylebone, central London, surrounded by townhouses. It was specifically for private housing let on long leases having a ground rent by the Portman Estate, which owns the private communal gardens. It marks the western end of Wigmore Street, which connects it to Cavendish Square to the east.
Campden Hill is a hill in Kensington, West London, bounded by Holland Park Avenue on the north, Kensington High Street on the south, Kensington Palace Gardens on the east and Abbotsbury Road on the west. The name derives from the former Campden House, built by Baptist Hicks, 1st Viscount Campden whose country seat was Campden House in the Gloucestershire town of Chipping Campden.
Marylebone is an area in London, England and is located in the City of Westminster. It is in Central London and part of the West End. Oxford Street forms its southern boundary.
Sir Maurice Berkeley of Bruton in Somerset and of Berkeley House, Clerkenwell, Middlesex, served as Chief Banner Bearer of England to Kings Henry VIII and Edward VI and to Queen Elizabeth I, and rose rapidly in the Tudor court. He came from a cadet branch of the great Berkeley family of Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, but in his career, his initial advantage was due to his mother's second marriage to Sir John FitzJames, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench 1526–1539, which by 1538 had brought him into the household of Thomas Cromwell, from which he passed into the royal household by 1539.
Hill Street is a street in Mayfair, London, which runs south-west, then west, from Berkeley Square to Deanery Street, a short approach way from Park Lane. It was developed from farmland in the 18th century. Travelling one block to the east and south sees a fall of about three metres, whereas in the other direction the land rises gradually across six main blocks to beyond the north of Marble Arch. Hill Street's homes gained fashionable status from the outset: grand townhouses seeing use, at first, as seasonal lettings (rentals) and/or longer-term London homes of nobility — later, of other wealthy capitalists as much. Twenty-two, approximately half of its town houses, are listed. Along its course, only Audley Square House departs from townhouse-sized frontage, yet this shares in the street's predominant form of domestic architecture, Georgian neo-classical. Hill Street's public house is the oldest surviving one in Mayfair.
Swan House is a Grade II* listed house at 17 Chelsea Embankment on the north bank of the River Thames in Chelsea, central London, England. Built in 1876 by the architect Richard Norman Shaw, architecturally it is relevant both to the Queen Anne Revival and to the Arts and Crafts movement. It was built by Shaw for the artistic patrons Wickham and Elizabeth Flower. Jones and Woodward, in their Guide to the Architecture of London, consider Swan House to be the "finest Queen Anne Revival domestic building in London."
In British usage, the term townhouse originally referred to the opulent town or city residence of a member of the nobility or gentry, as opposed to their country seat, generally known as a country house or, colloquially, for the larger ones, stately home. The grandest of the London townhouses were stand-alone buildings, but many were terraced buildings.
Stratton Street is a street in the Mayfair district of the City of Westminster, London. It runs from Berkeley Street in the north to Piccadilly in the south.
South Audley Street is a major shopping street in Mayfair, London. It runs north to south from the southwest corner of Grosvenor Square to Curzon Street.
Leicester House was a large aristocratic townhouse in Westminster, London, to the north of where Leicester Square now is. Built by the Earl of Leicester and completed in 1635, it was later occupied by Elizabeth Stuart, a British princess and former Queen of Bohemia, and in the 1700s by the two successive Hanoverian princes of Wales.
Wellington Square is a garden square in Chelsea, London, off the south side of the King's Road. It was built in the first decades of the nineteenth century on the former site of a nursery owned by the florist and "well-known tulip-fancier" Thomas Davey and named after the Duke of Wellington. The square consists of 35 five-storey terraced stucco houses around a central garden with a fountain. The whole square is grade II listed with Historic England.
145 Piccadilly was a large terraced townhouse on Piccadilly in the London district of Mayfair that was built in the late 18th century. It was the residence of Hamar Bass in the late 19th century and home to the Duke and Duchess of York and two young daughters, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, from 1926 to 1936. It was badly damaged in an air raid in 1940 and demolished in 1959.
