Hyde Park Gardens Hyde Park, W2

HYDE PARK GARDENS

HYDE PARK, W2

The former home of Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe, is one of the largest lateral apartments in Hyde Park Gardens.

Mary, The Duchess was brought up at Crewe Hall in Cheshire and Crewe House, on Curzon Street in London, one of Mayfair’s last great mansions. In 1935 she married George InnesKer, 9th Duke of Roxburghe, at Westminster Abbey. In 1937 she attended Westminster once more, for the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, carrying the Queen’s train with the Duchesses of Beccleuch, Norfolk and Rutland.

In 1953 Mary showed great tenacity, resisting a campaign by her husband, the 9th Duke, to evict her from Floors Castle, overlooking the River Tweed near Kelso. The action was brought under Scottish common law, which at that time laid down a wife lived in her husband’s house only ‘by license’. At the time the Duke gave no reason for his actions.

Mary withstood the six-week siege without telephone, electric light, or gas. The Duke had ordered the water also be turned off, but changed his mind when a neighbour, the Earl of Home

(as the future Prime Minister was then referred to) advised her to warn the insurance company of the fire risk. Other sympathetic neighbours, including Lord Haig, surreptitiously supplied her with food, paraffin lamps and candles for the six weeks.

The dispute was eventually settled out of court and the Duchess departed for London. In December that year, 1953, Mary was granted a divorce on account of her husband’s adultery, after which she started her new life at Hyde Park Gardens, in an apartment, elegantly furnished and befitting her status. She worked for many charities and was President of the National Union of Townswomen’s Guilds, in addition to becoming an enthusiastic member of the Royal Society of Literature and patron of the Royal Ballet.

Mary entertained young and old alike at her Hyde Park Gardens home, with the same attention to detail and Rothschild cuisine as had her parents. She inherited West Horsley Place, a spacious 16th century house and estate near Leatherhead, Surrey in 1967, following her mother’s death. She took a philosophic view of the worldly goods with which she was endowed and when informed in 1983 that Crewe House, sold by her father in 1937 for £90,000, was on the market again for £50 million, simply replied, “I will bear the news with fortitude.”

Hyde Park Gardens was designed by architect John Crake as part of the Tyburnia development, planned by architect and surveyor Samuel Pepys Cockerell in 1827 for the Bishop of London’s Estate. An ambitious masterplan was devised by Cockerell to redevelop the estate into a prestigious residential address that would rival Belgravia, which in its early years it did, attracting the very nobility and wealthy families it was intended for.

Plans were laid out to create spacious squares and grand terraces of mansions and townhouses which were to fill the acres between Hyde Park and Paddington Station. Detailed design and development were then contracted out to local developers and other architects.

Hyde Park Gardens, initially named Hyde Park Terrace, was originally designed and built as a terrace of grand town houses, each house self-contained and dating from 1836. The development is significant in having two primary elevations, the rear entrance frontage and frontage overlooking the communal private gardens, which are among the most beautiful in London, having regularly won awards. This innovation remains a key attraction for many residents.