Portland Place
BBC Broadcasting House |
Portland Place is a street in the
History and topography
In the early 19th century, Portland Place was incorporated into the royal route from
Portland Place still contains many of the spacious Georgian terraced houses built by the Adams, as well as some early 20th century buildings and a few post World War II bombing
In administrative terms, Portland Place lies within the City of Westminster's Marylebone High Street Ward as well as the Harley Street Conservation Area.[5]
Residents and buildings
While most is high quality residential in a close local community, many of the houses are now occupied by company headquarters, professional bodies, embassies and charities (including Arthritis Research UK and the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund). The landmark headquarters of the
Its northern end opens into Nash's elegant
A Grade II listed memorial to Quintin and Alice Hogg erected in 1906 stands opposite Broadcasting House at the south end of Portland Place.[7]
There are a number of international independent schools on Portland Place, including Abercorn Upper School, Queens College and the Southbank International School.
Literary references
- Portland Place was the home of Jane Gamble, the character on whom Henry James based his novel The Portrait of a Lady.
- Jane Gamble was also the real-life subject of My Courtship and its Consequences by Henry Wikoff.
- Portland Place was the London address of, first, Adam Verver and his daughter Maggie Verver, and then (beginning with Volume One, Book Three, Chapter Four) of Prince Amerigo and his wife, the former Maggie Verver, in the last complete major novel by Henry James, The Golden Bowl.
- Portland Place is the home of The Thirty-nine Steps.
- Portland Place is the home of Stephen Jones in H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Horror in the Museum".
- Portland Place is featured in Daphne du Maurier's novel Julius.
- Portland Place is the location of the private hotel where Valeria and Eustace stay after their truncated honeymoon in The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins.
- Portland Place is the address of the wealthy brothers in Mark Twain's short story "The Million Pound Note".
- Portland Place is a metaphor for Septimus Warren Smith's view of the world as a strange but wonderful place in Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway.[8]
- In Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens, the angel Aziraphale learned to dance the gavotte in a "discreet gentleman's club" in Portland Place, becoming the first and only angel who dances (on the head of a pin or otherwise).
See also
- List of eponymous roads in London
- August 1967 British Pathe Newsreel covering the "Battle on Portland Place" (which was then without trees)
- Oxford Street and its northern tributaries:
References
- ISBN 9781448146642. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
- ISBN 0-233-97979-4.
- ^ Plan of a Street Proposed from Charing Cross to Portland Place (Map). Commissioners of Woods and Forests. 1811. Archived from the original on 21 November 2016. Retrieved 21 November 2016.
- ^ Thornbury, Walter (1887). Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places. Cassell, limited.
- ^ "Harley Street Conservation Area Map September 2007" (PDF). Westminster City Council. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 July 2011. Retrieved 21 May 2010.
- ^ "John Buchan the Presbyterian Cavalier", by Andrew Lownie
- ^ Historic England. "Statue of Quintin Hogg (1226993)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 1 December 2014.
- ISBN 978-0-15-662870-9.
Bibliography
Georgian London (1945) by Sir
Philip Temple, Colin Thom, Andrew Saint (2017) Survey of London: South-East Marylebone Volumes 51 and 52, Yale University Press, pp. 944
Edward Walford (1878) 'Oxford Street and its northern tributaries: Part 2 of 2', in Old and New London: Volume 4 , pp. 441-467
External links
Media related to Portland Place at Wikimedia Commons
