In the morning we explored a little more of London’s Mayfair and Soho areas before our booked tour of a great old theater.
BERKELEY SQUARE
Mayfair’s Berkeley Square
Temporary installation of Dale Chihuly glass sculpture
A manufacturer on Davies Street in Mayfair was once here.
Colefax and Fowler at 39 Brook Street
Blue Plaque for Sir Jeffry Wyatville (1766-1840), architect and designer
Sir Jeffry Wyattville was responsible for most of King George IV’s alterations to Windsor Castle beginning in 1824. As the victor in a design contest with John Nash, Robert Smirke, and John Soane, Wyatville moved into the Castle’s Winchester Tower where he lived for many years, even while doing architectural projects elsewhere. He designed the Waterloo Chamber and the current iteration of the Round Tower. He is buried in St. George’s Chapel in the castle.
Sotheby’s Mayfair Showroom, 34-35 New Bond Street
Savory and Moore Pharmacy’s Regency-era facade is maintained by
Ralph Lauren at 143 New Bond Street
This difficult-to-read blue plaque is for Admiral Lord Nelson,
who lived here at 103 New Bond street. It concludes, “Fell at Trafalgar, 1895.”
Alfred Dunhill’s store occupies Bourdon House, 2 Davies Street,
once the residence of the Duke of Westminster.
It includes a courtyard restaurant
The Georgian Door
After lunch at the Duke of Wellington, we walked over to Hanover Square, which was unusually crowded with big lines — for the Regent Street Apple Store, it turned out — all were waiting for the newest gadget being introduced that day.
.
Hanover Square statue of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger 1759-1806.
St. George’s, Hanover Square, completed in 1725 by architect John James, the Mayfair parish church of many prominent persons such as George Frederick Handel (1685-1759)
and the scene of many aristocratic weddings.
The Last Supper by William Kent (1684-1758)
surrounded by carvings by a pupil of Grinling Gibbons
The stained glass window is Flemish
In the Georgian era, the church would have had all clear windows, such as these.
The organ was rebuilt recently
We wandered onward, to Golden Square, full of Londoners enjoying their lunch hour outside on a perfect day. Golden Square was laid out in the late 17th century and was an area occupied by many prominent individuals and families, such as the Duke of Chandos and the Duchess of Cleveland.
The statue in the center of Golden Square is George II.
 |
Commemorating the site of the Portuguese Embassy in the 18th C, and its most famous ambassador Marquess of Pombal.
Great Windmill Street wall niche with bust of Prime Minister Edward Geoffrey Smith-Stanley
(1799-1869) 14th Earl of Derby.
Plaque on #14 Great Windmill Street marking the anatomy theatre and first location of the museum of Anatomist Dr. William Hunter (1718-1783); his collection is now at the University of Glasgow; his brother John, also a physician, founded the collection known as the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.