Interesting Facts about Mayfair

No 3. Savile Row

In 1968 the Beatles, who bought their suits at Tommy Nutter’s House of Nutter at No. 35 Savile Row, set up their Apple Corps Company at No. 3. They played their last gig on the roof of the building on 3 January 1969, and were stopped after forty minutes by the police, following complaints about the noise from nearby office workers.

No. 15 Savile Row

Henry Poole, owner of the Henry Poole firm at No. 15 Savile Row, inadvertently created the tuxedo in 1860 when a new type of short smoking jacket designed for Edward, Prince of Wales, to wear at informal dinner parties at Sandringham caught the eye of a visitor from America, James Potter of Tuxedo Park, who asked Poole if he could design a similar garment for him to wear back home.

Annabel’s, Berkeley Square

In the 1960s, Mark Birley opened the basement as a nightclub, Annabel’s, named after his wife. It soon became the most fashionable in London among the super rich and once refused entry to George Harrison for not wearing a tie. When in 1986 a policewoman and traffic warden turned up at the door a journalist put his finger through the lens of the traffic warden’s spectacles to prove they contained no glass and then realized that the traffic warden was the Duchess of York and the policewoman Princess Diana. The Maitre D turned them away on the grounds that no uniforms are allowed inside.

Curzon Place

Mama Cass, the Mamas and Papas singer, and the Who’s drummer, Keith Moon, both died in the 1970s in Flat 12, 9 Curzon Place, a property owned by the singer Harry Nilsson. Although press reports said that the cause of death for Cass in July 1974 at the age of 32 was inhalation of vomit after choking on a sandwich, the pathologist found no traces of food blocking her trachea and concluded that she had died of natural causes. Four years later, on 7 September 1978, Moon overdosed on chlormethiazole pills prescribed to fight his alcoholism. Thirty-two Heminevrin tablets were found in Moon’s stomach, twenty-six of them undissolved.

No. 23 Brook Street

The flamboyant rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix moved into the 23 Brook Street with girlfriend Kathy Etchingham in January 1969 and was soon visited by the Daily Mirror’s Don Short, who noted how Hendrix had described Etchingham to him as “my girlfriend, my past girlfriend, my next girlfriend. My mother and my sister and all that bit. My Yoko Ono from Chester”. When Jane de Mendelssohn from International Times interviewed Hendrix that March, the guitarist opened the door naked and conducted the interview from his bed. Hendrix moved out of Brook Street later that month, but despite the brevity of his tenure the property was awarded English Heritage’s first blue plaque in honour of a rock star in 1997.

No. 25 Brook Street

Handel, the German-born composer, moved into No. 25 in 1723. Handel composed a number of works in Brook Street, including the operas Giulio Cesare and Tamerlano. Handel died in the house in 1759 and in 2001 it was opened as a museum to the composer after an exorcism had been held in one of the rooms to remove a troublesome ghost.

The Connaught (Grosvenor Square)

In 1968, when Richard Nixon, then president of the United States, was staying at the hotel the telephonist, asked by a caller if he could be put through to the president but bound by the strictness rules of protocol, replied “Nixon? And the initial, sir?”

No. 20 (Grosvenor Square)

Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the US armed forces during the Second World War, who wanted a base at least fifty miles outside London but was told such a development was impossible as he would not be able to drive “even 20 miles in the blackout”, moved his London headquarters into No. 20 in 1944.

Albemarle Club, No. 13 Albemarle Street

Oscar Wilde’s descent into public disgrace began at the Albemarle Club in February 1895, the day before the opening of his play “The importance of Being Earnest”, when the Marquess of Queensberry, father of Lord Alfred Douglas, with whom Wilde was having an affair, left at the club a note which read “To Oscar Wilde Posing Somdomite [sic]”. Wilde issued libel proceedings, and the peer was arrested for “unlawfully and maliciously publishing a certain defamatory libel”. But when Wilde failed to win the case he was prosecuted for gross indecency, and sent to jail.

No. 140 Park Lane

During the Second World War 140 Park Lane was used as offices by the N (Netherlands) section of Britain’s secret guerrilla section, a branch so incompetent that almost every agent sent into Holland was captured and later murdered at Mauthausen concentration camp, according to the espionage historian Roy Berkeley. When one captured agent sent back coded warnings of the impending doom to 140 Park Lane he was ignored, which convinced him that HQ’s lack of interest was part of a grand plan. It was only when twenty or so captured agents began communicating at Mauthausen via the camp’s central heating system that they realized they were victims of major incompetence rather than pawns in a clever game.

Aldford House (Park Lane)

When plans were announced for the building of the original Aldford House on the site in 1897 the local landowner, the Duke of Westminster, worried that the proposed house might not be of a sufficiently high standard, sent the businessman behind the venture, diamond merchant Alfred Beit, a note stipulating that he must spend at least £10,000 on the property. Beit explained in his reply that he intended to spend that much on the stables alone. Aldford House was pulled down in 1929 and rebuilt as a block of flats bearing the same name.

Dorchester Hotel (Park Lane)

While staying at the hotel in 1958 John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath, stuck up conversation with the economist J. K. Galbraith, and asked him to explain a particularly complicated piece of economic theory, only to be told: “Under capitalism man exploits man, whereas under communism it is just the reverse.”

During breakfast in the same hotel in 1958, Steinbeck and Adlai Stevenson, the American Democratic presidential candidate, agreed that the biggest threat to the American system was not Soviet Russia but Richard Nixon, who as US president was later impeached.

Electricity Sub Station (Duke Street)

Built in 1905 over a communal garden square, the design incorporated a roof garden which had trees and plants in tubs. The roof garden is said to be the only place in London where quarrelling is specifically forbidden by law.

Lamp posts

An examination of lamp posts in Mayfair reveals the same design, which the Council says is thought to stand for Westminster "City Council". However, there is another interpretation of the deliberately entwined CC on every lamp post. It is rumoured that in 1925 the 2nd Duke of Westminster was introduced to Gabriella (Coco) Chanel and pursued her. Extravagant with her as he was with all his lovers, he had her initials engraved in gold on all the lamps posts in the area.