St John’s Wood, Westminster

A plush 19th-​​century suburb with interwar augmentation, situated on the north-​​west side of Regent’s Park

St John's Wood High Street

St John’s Wood High Street, in the area formerly known as Portland Town, as seen in December 2006

The name was recorded in Latin form at the end of the 13th century, when the land came into the possession of the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. The English name was first mentioned in 1524.

Henry Samuel Eyre, a London wine merchant, purchased the estate from the Earl of Chesterfield in 1732. St John’s Wood did not evolve in the same way as many other smart parts of London. Its low-​​lying situation, poorly served by roads, did not attract gentlemen’s seats and yet the Eyre family were keen to profit from its devel­opment, unlike more protective and resistant landowners elsewhere. In 1794 they commis­sioned a plan that would have seen St John’s Wood laid out in the same style as the spa town of Bath but this was stymied by recession during the Napoleonic Wars. To the south of the Eyre estate, the area around St John’s Wood High Street was built up as Portland Town in the early 19th century, with housing for the working classes.

Thomas Lord’s cricket ground moved from Dorset Square to St John’s Wood Road in 1814. The Eyre family laid roads across their estate in the 1820s and agreed building contracts with a number of small firms, who did most of their work in the 1840s. Standards were kept high and the new inhab­itants were bankers, merchants and gentlemen of independent means. The houses had so many servants that mews were needed to accom­modate the overflow. Later phases of building, especially towards the west, were less exclusive.

St John’s Wood was well-​​served by omnibuses from the late 1850s, and Marlborough Road station opened in 1868.

Portland Town was redeveloped from the 1890s, with a mix of insti­tu­tional buildings and mansion blocks, together with shopping parades on the High Street. Elsewhere, blocks of private flats replaced many of the early Victorian houses during the 1930s. A new station was built in 1939 and opened as St John’s Wood, whereupon Marlborough Road station closed.

After the Second World War the municipal authorities rebuilt so extensively in the north and west that some parts of the former Eyre estate are no longer thought of as being in St John’s Wood. However, the surviving Victorian properties and the classiest of the flats and mansion blocks form a charming and prestigious enclave, which reaches its acme on Avenue Road.

The Hungarian film producer Alexander Korda lived on Avenue Road from 1933 to 1939 and the composer Benjamin Britten lived on St John’s Wood High Street in the mid-​​1940s. More recent homeowners have included Sir Paul McCartney and the supermodel Kate Moss.

In the 19th century St John’s Wood acquired various vaguely humorous nicknames, like Apostle’s Grove and the Grove of the Evangelist.

Postal district: NW8
Station: Jubilee line (zone 2)
Further reading: Richard Tames, St. John’s Wood and Maida Vale Past, Historical Public­ations, 1998