C O N T E X T 1 1 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 9 23 OLIVER BRADBURY Failure and triumph in Mayfair and Fitzrovia A multiple failure of the early listing process in Mayfair, following the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, contrasts with a heart-warming recent case in Fitzrovia. Mayfair, London has lost at least four freestanding palaces of first-rank importance. These include Devonshire House, Chesterfield House, Dorchester House and Londonderry House. Today’s equivalent would be to suggest that Spencer House, St James’s, should be demolished to redevelop the site for a multistorey hotel. Such a proposal would surely be scoffed at.Yet buildings of similar calibre were being destroyed in Mayfair until 1962, the year in which Londonderry House was pulled down. As early as 1946, Westminster City Council had drawn up a map which featured recent developments, as well as buildings and monuments of national, artistic and historic interest.This may have been based on the wartime lists that were to form a basis for the later compilation of listed buildings registers. The large map of Westminster, approximately six foot by five foot, was undertaken by the city council rather than a national body such as the Ministry of Works. This must have been a direct response to the hammering that Westminster had received during the recently ended second world war. The map is colour-coded, with categories such as national and/or primary artistic interest, and secondary artistic and/ or historic interest. Areas and buildings undergoing current redevelopment are also colour-coded. No descriptions of individual properties are given. Nevertheless, I would like to focus on Grosvenor Square, the heart of the Duke ofWestminster’s Mayfair estate. Projected by 1720, the square was built between about 1725 and 1731. Apart from Lincoln’s Inn Fields, it was, and was to remain, the largest square in the West End of London. There were once 51 residential plots. By way of comparison, aristocratic St James’s Square had only 25. Today, only three historic properties (Nos 4, 9 and 38) survive in Grosvenor Square. Basic arithmetic indicates that 48 houses have been demolished. Mansions were demolished during the 1930s, and the square was badly damaged during the second world war. Despite Westminster City Council’s 1946 map of buildings and monuments of national, artistic and historic interest, it was not until 1957 that the Ministry of Housing and Local Government drew up a revised ‘Provisional list of buildings of architectural or historic interest for consideration in connection with the provisions of section 30 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947’. Between this and the next provisional list of 1969, six provisionally listed buildings in Grosvenor Square (all Grade II–III, the latter, which had no statutory protection, being abolished in 1970 with the system of provisional listing) were demolished. What went wrong? A few words should be said about ‘provisional’ listing. A provisional list for an area was compiled by an investigator. It consisted of those buildings identified No 9 Grosvenor Square, photographed in 2009
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