Hill Street, London

Hill Street is a street in the central Mayfair district of London which runs southwest from Berkeley Square towards Park Lane. It was developed from farmland in the 18th century and was named after a small hill there. It became a fashionable street in the 18th century and was home to a number of lords. The street contains several Grade I and Grade II listed buildings.

The street was developed in the 1740s by John Berkeley, 5th Baron Berkeley of Stratton. When John Rocque mapped London in 1746, the development was in progress and so the streets on that side of Berkeley Square were shown only in outline. The area had previously been farmland, and Hill Street crosses Farm Street. Hill Street was named after a rise in the ground, with Hay Hill being another street nearby.

Architects included Benjamin Timbrell, who designed numbers 17 and 19, now both Grade I listed buildings, c. 1748, and Oliver Hill, who worked on number 15 in the 1920s. Numbers 1 and 3 form a Grade II listed building; other listed houses in the street include numbers 11, 31 and 36.

Claud Phillimore refurbished number 35 for Lady Astor in the late 1940s. This had six storeys and a basement to provide both a grand and comfortable residence. Lady Astor's personal living room – "the Boudoir" – had walls decorated with blue satin.

Before the palace in Portman Square was built she had lived in Hill Street, Mayfair, her rooms in which are thus depicted by the last-named writer the date being 1773, when Mrs. Montagu was fifty-seven. "If I had paper and time I could entertain you with the account of Mrs. M.'s Room of Cupidons, which was opened with an assembly for all the foreigners, the literati, and the macaronis of the present age. Many and sly are the observations. How such a genius, at her age, and so circumstanced (Mr. M. had recently taken his upward flight), could think of painting the walls of her dressing-room with bowers of roses and jessamines entirely inhabited by little cupids in all their little wanton ways, is astonishing."

...
Wikipedia