Manor of Lileston Lisson Grove, occasionally referred to as Lissom Grove, takes its name from the manor (estate) of Lileston, which was included in the Domesday Book in 1086. Domesday recorded the presence of 8 households within the manor, suggesting a population of around forty. The manor stretched as far as the boundary with
Hampstead. From the 12th century onwards, the Manor of Lileston and the neighbouring
Manor of Tyburn) were served by the parish of
St Marylebone, an area which had consistent boundaries until the parish's successor, the
Metropolitan Borough of St Marylebone merged with neighbouring areas to form the
City of Westminster in 1965. The Manor of Lileston subdivided with the Manor of Lisson Green becoming an independent landholding. The edges of Lisson Grove are defined by the two current Edgware Road stations facing onto
Edgware Road or
Watling Street as it was previously known, one of the main Roman thoroughfares in and out of London. The road is also the western boundary of the wider
Marylebone district.
Early development Until the late 18th century the district remained essentially rural. Much of Lisson Grove had become a slum in Victorian London, notorious for drinking, crime and prostitution particularly in its pockets of extreme poverty with archetypal squalor, overcrowding and dilapidation. The arrival of the Regent's Canal in 1810 and the railway at Marylebone in 1899 led to rapid urbanisation of Lisson Grove.
Post-WWI development After
World War I, the Prime Minister,
David Lloyd George, announced a policy of "Homes Fit for Heroes", leading to a sponsored housing boom from which Lisson Grove benefitted. In 1924,
St Marylebone Borough Council completed the Fisherton Street Estate of seven apartment blocks in red-brick neo-Georgian style with high mansard roofs grouped around two courtyards. Noted for their innovation as some of the first social housing to include an indoor bathroom and toilet, since 1990 this has been a
conservation area The blocks were named mostly for the notable former residents of Lisson Grove and its surrounding areas, which drew Victorian landscape painters, sculptors, portraitists and architects: • Lilestone: the medieval manor stretching to Hampstead before Lisson/Lilestone Grove became a separate manor in about 1236 • Huxley:
Thomas Henry Huxley, the self-taught biologist and ardent Charles Darwin supporter lived at 41 North Bank in the 1850s. • Gibbons:
Grinling Gibbons (1648–1721), a master carver who worked on St Pauls • Landseer:
Edwin Landseer, famous for sculpting the lions in Trafalgar Square • Capland: land formerly owned by the Portman estate; this street is named for their interests in Capland,
Somerset, see
Street names of Lisson Grove • Frith:
William Silver Frith (1850–1924), sculptor • Orchardson:
William Quiller Orchardson (1832–1910), painter • Dicksee:
Francis Dicksee, a noted Victorian painter • Eastlake:
Charles Eastlake (1836–1906), British architect and furniture designer • Tadema:
Lawrence Alma-Tadema • Poynter:
Edward Poynter (1836–1919) • Stanfield:
George Clarkson Stanfield and his son, both artists. • Frampton:
George Frampton, the sculptor had lived nearby at Carlton Hill from 1910 and may have given his name to Frampton Street and Frampton House • Wyatt:
Matthew Cotes Wyatt, who lived at Dudley Grove House, Paddington
Post-WWII development After
World War II, further social housing was completed at the Church Street Estate (1949) and the larger Lisson Green Estate (1975). In 1960 a new Labour Exchange was established on Lisson Grove to much fanfare, and later featured in punk music history as the place where members of
The Clash first met. The area also became known for its antiques trade. In the 2010s, Westminster City Council have proposed extensive regeneration.
Notable residents •
Charles Rossi sculptor at 21, Lisson Grove, 1810 •
Leigh Hunt, resided at 13, Lisson Grove North on his release from Horsemonger Prison in 1815 and was visited on many occasions by Lord Byron here •
Benjamin Haydon, painter at 21 Lisson Grove, 1817, tutor of Edwin Landseer and his brother •
Edwin Landseer (1802–1873) and various members of his family congregated to live at Cunningham Place. From 1825 he first lived at 1, St John's Wood Road on the corner of Lisson Grove in a small cottage on the site of Punker's Barn. This was later demolished in 1844 to make place for a small but "rather aristocratic" house (built by Thomas Cubitt, who also built Osborne House on the Isle of Wight for Queen Victoria). The Cubitt designed house was later demolished in 1894 to make way for artisan workers homes built by the railway arranged as Wharncliffe Gardens. •
George Augustus Henry Sala, journalist, born in 1828, recalls growing up in Lisson Grove during the 1830s "when the principal public buildings were pawnbrokers, and 'leaving shops', low public houses and beershops and cheap undertakers." • Catherine Sophia Blake,
William Blake's widow, lived from 1828 to 1830, at 20 Lisson Grove North, London (renumbered 112 Lisson Grove, London NW1) as housekeeper to
Frederick Tatham. (Original building demolished.) •
Samuel Palmer, landscape painter and etcher lived at 4, Street, Lisson Grove, Marylebone •
Mary Shelley moved to North Bank, 28 March 1836 for one year with her son •
Thomas Henry Huxley, resident at North Bank during the 1850s •
James Augustus St John moved in 1858 from North Bank to Grove End Road • Dr Southwood Smith moved to Lisson Grove in 1859 to work at the London Fever Hospital. Smith's granddaughter
Octavia Hill, whom he brought up, later lived at 190 Marylebone Road becoming a founder of the
Peabody Trust and have a great impact on the social housing movement evident in Lisson Grove from the 1890s onwards. •
Emily Davies, founder of
Girton College, Cambridge lived at 17, Cunningham Place from 1863 to 1875 with her mother. •
George Eliot and her husband bought The Priory, 21 North Bank in 1863 and held many of her Sunday receptions during the 17 years she spent there until 1880. •
William Henry Giles Kingston born in London, 1814 at Harley Street, lived at No. 6, North Bank •
Jerome K. Jerome attended the Philological School, now
Abercorn School on the corner of Lisson Grove and Marylebone Road during the early 1870s. •
Arthur Machen, at Edward House, 7 Lisson Grove during World War I until the 1920s. •
Agatha Christie rented 5, Northwick Terrace during 1918–1919 •
Guy Gibson, V.C recipient, leader of the
Dambusters Raid lived at 32 Aberdeen Place between 1918 and 1944. ==Geography==