Qualla: Mayfair https://qualla.com/mayfair en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/mayfair-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Mayfair https://qualla.com/mayfair Mayfair: Introduction https://qualla.com/mayfair/ Photo credit Stephen Richards, CC BY-SA 2.0. The neighbourhood is named after a fair that the neighbourhood eventually got tired of. From 1686 to 1764 the May Fair ran every spring on the ground that is now Shepherd Market, a riot of jugglers, ballad sellers, gingerbread stalls, semolina-eating contests, women's foot racing and bare-knuckle fights. By the reign of George I, the entertainment had soured into something closer to a slum carnival; the 6th Earl of Coventry, who lived on Piccadilly, organised the locals to have it shut down. It was abolished in 1764. By then the wider area was already being redeveloped by the Grosvenor family into the most ambitious aristocratic estate in London, and within a generation the spring fair's old fields had been replaced by Hanover Square, Berkeley Square, Grosvenor Square, and the most expensive housing in Britain. The fair is gone; the name stuck.

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/mayfair-wp/gcpv-mayfair-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Mayfair: The Grosvenor Grid https://qualla.com/mayfair/ Photo credit CC0. The Grosvenor family - who became Dukes of Westminster in 1874 - acquired the land through marriage in 1677, when twelve-year-old heiress Mary Davies wed twenty-one-year-old Sir Thomas Grosvenor. In 1721, the London Journal reported that the ground 'upon which the May Fair former...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/mayfair-wp/gcpv-mayfair-the-grosvenor-grid.mp3 0:06 2 full Mayfair: Embassies in Old Houses https://qualla.com/mayfair/ Photo credit Mfi.media, Public domain. The First World War broke the British upper class's hold on the area. With servants harder to find and labour costs rising, the great houses became expensive to run, and many were converted into foreign embassies that needed prestigious addresses and could pay. The American embas...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/mayfair-wp/gcpv-mayfair-embassies-in-old-houses.mp3 0:06 3 full Mayfair: Brown's, Claridge's and Bertram's https://qualla.com/mayfair/ Photo credit nick macneill, CC BY-SA 2.0. Brown's Hotel opened in 1837 on Albemarle Street, and is considered one of London's oldest. Queen Victoria is thought to have taken tea there. In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful telephone call in Britain from inside Brown's. Rudyard Kipling wrote part of The ...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/mayfair-wp/gcpv-mayfair-browns-claridges-and-bertrams.mp3 0:06 4 full Mayfair: Savile Row https://qualla.com/mayfair/ Photo credit en:User:Solipsist (Andrew Dunn), CC BY-SA 2.5. Tailors began moving into Savile Row, on the south-eastern edge of the estate, in 1803. Henry Poole and Co arrived in 1846 and is the earliest extant tailor on the street. By the late nineteenth century Savile Row was the global capital of bespoke menswear, dressing emperors, sul...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/mayfair-wp/gcpv-mayfair-savile-row.mp3 0:06 5 full Mayfair: The Most Expensive Square https://qualla.com/mayfair/ Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. When Victor Watson and Marjory Phillips designed the British edition of Monopoly in 1936, they made Mayfair the most expensive property on the board. The choice was already a cliche by then: Mayfair had become shorthand for unaffordable London. The neighbourhood has never lost th...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/mayfair-wp/gcpv-mayfair-the-most-expensive-square.mp3 0:06 6 full