Portland Place

Portland Place
	Portland Place wide street
Namesake	William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland
Maintained by	Transport for London
Location	London, United Kingdom
Postal code	W1
Nearest Tube station	Oxford Circus ;
Other
Known for	BBC Broadcasting House ;

Last updated March 21, 2024

Portland Place is a street in the Marylebone district of central London. Named after the 3rd Duke of Portland, the unusually wide street is home to the BBC's headquarters Broadcasting House, the Chinese and Polish embassies, the Royal Institute of British Architects and numerous residential mansion blocks.

History and topography

The street was laid out by the brothers Robert and James Adam for the Duke of Portland in the 1770s and originally ran north from the gardens of a detached mansion called Foley House. It was said that the exceptional width of the street was conditioned by the Duke's obligation to his tenant, Lord Foley, that his views to the north would not be obscured.^[1]

In the early 19th century, Portland Place was incorporated into the royal route from Carlton House to Regent's Park via Langham Place, developed for the Prince Regent by John Nash. The street is unusually wide for central London (33 metres / 110 feet).^[2] The ambitious plans included a third circus to complement Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus known as Regent's Circus; the remains of this plan survive today in the wide space surrounding the street's junction with Marylebone Road.^[3] The Spanish Embassy was located at Portland Place from 1819-1821.^[4]

Portland Place still contains many of the spacious Georgian terraced houses built by the Adams, as well as some early 20th century buildings and a few post World War II bombing

In administrative terms, Portland Place lies within the City of Westminster's Marylebone High Street Ward as well as the Harley Street Conservation Area.^[5]

Residents and buildings

While most is high quality residential in a close local community, many of the houses are now occupied by company headquarters, professional bodies, embassies and charities (including Arthritis Research UK and the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund). The landmark headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects sits at 66 Portland Place directly opposite the Chinese embassy; for years practitioners of Falun Gong have mounted a silent protest in front of the former and facing the latter. Other foreign diplomatic institutions include the Polish Embassy, a Portuguese consulate, the High Commission of Kenya, the Swedish Ambassador's Residence and the Colombian Consulate. In addition, Portland Place remains a fashionable address with some very exclusive blocks of mansion flats. Number 1 houses the Institution of Chemical Engineers, number 41 the Academy of Medical Sciences, number 23 houses the Nursing and Midwifery Council, number 67 the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund and number 76 the Institute of Physics. The Institute of Physics building replaced two earlier Georgian terrace houses, one of which – number 76 – was the home of John Buchan, the author and politician who lived there from 1912 until 1919, which resulted in Portland Place being the London home of Richard Hannay, the hero of Buchan's most famous novel "The Thirty-Nine Steps".^[6]

Its northern end opens into Nash's elegant stucco semicircular Park Crescent, which in turn leads on to Park Square and Regent's Park. There are two landmark buildings at the south end of the street, although both are technically in Langham Place: the grand late Victorian Langham Hotel, and Broadcasting House. Langham Place is a short road which connects Portland Place to Upper Regent Street, although on the ground they all appear to be one street.

A Grade II listed memorial to Quintin and Alice Hogg erected in 1906 stands opposite Broadcasting House at the south end of Portland Place.^[7]

There are a number of international independent schools on Portland Place, including Abercorn Upper School, Queens College and the Southbank International School.

Literary references

Portland Place was the home of Jane Gamble, the character on whom Henry James based his novel The Portrait of a Lady .
Jane Gamble was also the real-life subject of My Courtship and its Consequences by Henry Wikoff.
Portland Place was the London address of, first, Adam Verver and his daughter Maggie Verver, and then (beginning with Volume One, Book Three, Chapter Four) of Prince Amerigo and his wife, the former Maggie Verver, in the last complete major novel by Henry James, The Golden Bowl .
Portland Place is the home of Richard Hannay in John Buchan's novel The Thirty-nine Steps .
Portland Place is the home of Stephen Jones in H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Horror in the Museum".
Portland Place is featured in Daphne du Maurier's novel Julius.
Portland Place is the location of the private hotel where Valeria and Eustace stay after their truncated honeymoon in The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins.
Portland Place is the address of the wealthy brothers in Mark Twain's short story "The Million Pound Note".
Portland Place is a metaphor for Septimus Warren Smith's view of the world as a strange but wonderful place in Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway .^[8]
In Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens , the angel Aziraphale learned to dance the gavotte in a "discreet gentleman's club" in Portland Place, becoming the first and only angel who dances (on the head of a pin or otherwise).

Related Research Articles

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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.

Great Portland Street in Marylebone, in the West End of London, links Oxford Street with the A501 Marylebone Road. A commercial street, it divides Fitzrovia, to the east, from Marylebone to the west. It delineates areas with contrasting identities, the west at strongest in grandiose Portland Place and Harley Street, the east at strongest in artists' and independent businesses of Fitzrovia. Administratively, the street lies in the City of Westminster's West End ward.

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Great Titchfield Street is a street in the West End of London. It runs north from Oxford Street to Greenwell Street, just short of the busy A501 Marylebone Road and Euston Road. It lies within the informally designated London area of Fitzrovia. In administrative terms it is in the City of Westminster. It lies within their designated East Marylebone Conservation Area in the former Metropolitan Borough of St Marylebone.

Cavendish Square is a public garden square in Marylebone in the West End of London. It has a double-helix underground commercial car park. Its northern road forms ends of four streets: of Wigmore Street that runs to Portman Square in the much larger Portman Estate to the west; of Harley Street which runs an alike distance; of Chandos Street which runs for one block and; of Cavendish Place which runs the same. The south side itself is modern: the rear façade and accesses to a flagship department store and office block. On the ground floors facing are Comptoir Libanais, Royal Bank of Scotland and Pret a Manger premises.

Park Crescent is at the north end of Portland Place and south of Marylebone Road in London. The crescent consists of elegant stuccoed terraced houses by the architect John Nash, which form a semicircle. The crescent is part of Nash's and wider town-planning visions of Roman-inspired imperial West End approaches to Regent's Park. It was originally conceived as a circus (circle) to be named Regent's Circus but instead Park Square was built to the north. The only buildings on the Regent's Park side of the square are small garden buildings, enabling higher floors of the Park Crescent buildings to have a longer, green northern view.

Langham Place is a short street in Westminster, central London, England. Just north of Oxford Circus, it connects Portland Place to the north with Regent Street to the south in London's West End. It is, or was, the location of many significant public buildings, and gives its name to the Langham Place group, a circle of early women's rights activists.

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.

Hallam Street is a road situated in the Parish of St Marylebone and London's West End. In administrative terms it lies within the City of Westminster's West End Ward as well as the Harley Street Conservation Area. Formerly named both Charlotte Street and Duke Street, it was renamed in the early 1900s after Henry Hallam (1777–1859), a noted historian who had been a local resident, and his son Arthur Henry Hallam (1811–1833), poet and the subject of Tennyson's elegy In Memoriam.

Bolsover Street is in the Parish of St Marylebone in London's West End. In administrative terms it lies within the City of Westminster's West End Ward and is partly in the Harley Street Conservation Area whilst also sitting on the edges of the Regents Park and East Marylebone Conservation Areas.

Weymouth Street lies in the Marylebone district of the City of Westminster and connects Marylebone High Street with Great Portland Street. The area was developed in the late 18th century by Henrietta Cavendish Holles and her husband Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford. This part of Marylebone was noted to part of Manor of Tyburn and dates back to the year 1086.

This is a list of the etymology of street names in the London district of Marylebone. The following utilises the generally accepted boundaries of Marylebone viz. Marylebone Road to the north, Great Portland Street to the east, Marble Arch and Oxford Street to the south and Edgware Road to the west.

References

↑ Taggart, Caroline (2012). The Book of London Place Names. Random House. p. 134. ISBN 9781448146642 . Retrieved 4 April 2018.
↑ Norrie, Ian; Bohm, Dorothy (1984). Walks Around London – A Celebration of the Capital . London: Andre Deutsch. ISBN 0-233-97979-4.
↑ Plan of a Street Proposed from Charing Cross to Portland Place (Map). Commissioners of Woods and Forests. 1811. Archived from the original on 21 November 2016. Retrieved 21 November 2016.
↑ Thornbury, Walter (1887). Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places. Cassell, limited.
↑ "Harley Street Conservation Area Map September 2007" (PDF). Westminster City Council. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 July 2011. Retrieved 21 May 2010.
↑ "John Buchan the Presbyterian Cavalier", by Andrew Lownie
↑ Historic England. "Statue of Quintin Hogg (1226993)". National Heritage List for England . Retrieved 1 December 2014.
↑ Woolf, Virginia (1981). Mrs. Dalloway . New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-15-662870-9.

Bibliography

Georgian London (1945) by Sir John Summerson ISBN 0-7126-2095-8

Philip Temple, Colin Thom, Andrew Saint (2017) Survey of London: South-East Marylebone Volumes 51 and 52, Yale University Press, pp. 944

Edward Walford (1878) 'Oxford Street and its northern tributaries: Part 2 of 2', in Old and New London : Volume 4 , pp. 441-467

External links

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[1] Taggart, Caroline (2012). The Book of London Place Names. Random House. p. 134. ISBN 9781448146642 . Retrieved 4 April 2018.

[Norrie-2] Norrie, Ian; Bohm, Dorothy (1984). Walks Around London – A Celebration of the Capital . London: Andre Deutsch. ISBN 0-233-97979-4.

[3] Plan of a Street Proposed from Charing Cross to Portland Place (Map). Commissioners of Woods and Forests. 1811. Archived from the original on 21 November 2016. Retrieved 21 November 2016.

[4] Thornbury, Walter (1887). Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places. Cassell, limited.

[5] "Harley Street Conservation Area Map September 2007" (PDF). Westminster City Council. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 July 2011. Retrieved 21 May 2010.

[6] "John Buchan the Presbyterian Cavalier", by Andrew Lownie

[EngHet-7] Historic England. "Statue of Quintin Hogg (1226993)". National Heritage List for England . Retrieved 1 December 2014.

[8] Woolf, Virginia (1981). Mrs. Dalloway . New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-15-662870-9.

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