Mary Davies' dowry included the land on which Mayfair sits today and which the Grosvenor family developed much in the style of Belgravia. The intention was that the wealthy who moved here, close to court, should be easily able to have their needs met locally. So big homes were built for those with means, mews for their horses, carriages and the stable lads who tended them, and artisan dwellings for the tradesfolk, as well as establishments for the butcher, baker and candle-stick maker, all to hand, as and when needed.
Like Belgravia, Mayfair became hugely popular and extraordinarily wealthy. Like Belgravia, it has become exorbitantly expensive to live here. The US embassy moved away, citing security concerns. I wouldn't mind betting, though, that ridiculous rents were a contributing factor. Consequently, many home owners are on the move again, and banks and businesses that can afford the area are re-shaping it, yet again.
Not always for the good. Many prices are ridiculous. On our walk today we saw a Dover sole lunch offered in a very ordinary street cafe for £45, with appetisers coming in at around the £15 marker. We decided not to check what Gordon Ramsay might offer his fish for the day at Claridge's, just a block away.
The area has long had a bit of a horse-trading reputation which goes way back to the 1600s when a fayre came to be held frequently in what is now called Shepherds Market. It soon became an institution, and the Fayre held in the month of May for many a long year, led to the naming of Mayfair. Though it was regularly closed by the authorities for slatternly and disorderly behaviour inappropriate to the majority. Even in our time it has held a reputation as a red-light district. It was here that novelist Jeffrey Archer picked up a prostitute, lied about it, and was jailed in 2001, for perjury. Rich man, poor man, he wrote.
It is an area I remember from Regency novels. It was here that Beau Brummell lived at one time. And Lord Byron. Gunter's Tea Shoppe was around in those days selling sweat cakes and tea to courting lovers. Today the sweets are just as exquisite and come in the prettiest packaging, but from Japan, in a pretty Japanese shop and pretty Japanese packaging, at pretty hefty prices. Trumper's barbershop carries its old traditions into today, though it was more a Victorian establishment, than Georgian. It still has cubicles in the back of the shop, individually curtained off for privacy. Victoria Beckham's store now substitutes for the shops where dainty Regency ladies would buy brightly coloured ribbon lengths to decorate their hats and dresses.
The interior of her shop, though, is odd. It looks like a massive gallery with shards of refracted glass highlighting the only products in the entire expanse of space: some 14 handbags on three shelves on one wall. That is it. And a geometrically shaped wooden stool sitting on the floor along the opposite wall. Which, I imagine, allows adoring clients to sit and view the bags. Like art. As in a gallery. And there are five dark-suited staff in an otherwise vast empty store to assist them. Though, we never did see any potential clients in-house.
There were more bored staff in the Royal, a beautiful arcade, sporting the modern interpretation of diamond tie pins and buckles for leather boots, soft as a glove that the wealthy bucks have always needed. Biting their nails. Twiddling their thumbs. Client free. Their days must be desperate.
And Crockfords is still around where the aristocracy used to wager on whims. William Crockford, its founder, was a fishmonger - 'in trade' - who made so much money gambling that he was able to buy four homes side by side at extortionate prices, then demolish them, in order to build his first gambling den. Today, as in the Georgian era, these exclusive gambling establishments are the playgrounds of the world's wealthy.
Such clubs are still a big feature on the Mayfair scene. We came across the Clermont Club operating to one side of Berkeley Square. It was here that Lord Lucan was due to gamble with his clubby chums on the night he murdered his children's nanny. He never did arrive.
Just a block over Mama Cass of the Mamas and Papas died on the top floor of this building. Choking on a sandwich, the press said. Though, technically, she died of a heart attack. Four years later, in the same house, in the same room, in the same bed, Keith Moon of The Who, died of a drug overdose.
Some good things happened, though. In this hotel, in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call. Around the other corner from Berkeley Square, Elizabeth 11 was born, though today, that house is a very ugly building. The blue posted plaques on the walls keep tabs on the tale of Mayfair's history. While the boys in the many bars around the area sprawl out onto the streets, telling tales of today over very long lunch breaks. Some say Sydney is the most expensive spot on the planet. I wonder if they have checked out Mayfair lately.
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