Curzon Street

MAYFAIR, W1

One Of Curzon Street’s Oldest Houses and Nancy Mitford’s World War II Mayfair ‘billet’: It’s super. Do admit.

Serving as Nancy Mitford’s billet during her stint with the Auxiliary Fire Service in WWII, 45 Curzon Street is one of the oldest homes on the road dating from circa 1785. The home was built by George Augustus Curzon, 3rd Viscount Howe, from whom the street takes its name. Mayfair was initially developed for the wealthy and titled, something that has changed little in the last three hundred years.

Number 45 Curzon Street was initially occupied by a widow, Temperance Rhodes. Historical records reveal quite a noble and well-

connected list of residents subsequent to Ms Rhodes, including the Hon James Hamilton Stanhope, Son of the 3rd Earl Stanhope and nephew of William Pitt the Younger. Stanhope was well known in society and in military circles. having seen service with Sir John Moore, Lord Lyndedoch and the Duke of Wellington. The first record of trade at the address was when the property had passed on to Will Coleman an upholsterer. He was succeeded by James Smith in 1834, a furnishing and iron manager.

Naval surgeon James Metcalf Appleton acquired the property before 1843 and then passed the property to his son, Thomas Cass Appleton who, by 1883, was running a chemist’s shop at the address, with the upper floors let to Colonel the Honourable James Pierce Maxwell, a son of the 6th Baron Farnham. By 1888 the property had been acquired by physician Henry Roxburgh Fuller, physician to St George’s Hospital on Hyde Park Corner (now a world class luxury hotel The Lanesborough) and to H.R.H. The Duke of Cambridge, uncle of Queen Victoria. In 1911 another man of medicine, acquired the property. Harold Dearden’s specialty was psychology, having served in Flanders during WWI. Dearden wrote and published a number of successful books. In 1926 the house was purchased by Sydney Frederick Studd who occupied the ground floor as an antique shop, renting the upper floors to Cecilia Ivy Knight, later to become Ivy O’Neil-Dunne. Dunne was friends with novelist Nancy Mitford, the eldest of the Mitford sisters, who was regarded as one of the ‘Bright Young People’ on the London social scene between the wars. As one of the gay, tin-hatted, members of the Auxiliary Fire Service, she stayed at 45 Curzon Street while keeping the night watch, allegedly alternately resting on a make-shift bed and running into the street, exhorting her companions to “Come and look at the V1s. They are so pretty. Do admit” , V1s being the flying bomb – also known to the Allies as the buzz bomb or doodlebug!

The home has now been re-built and fully restored with modern extensions, which include windows and doors in the contemporary extension homage to Maison de Verre, Paris. Internally, the property is designed and finished to the highest specification by an experienced and well-respected architect and interior designer.