Escorts in Marylebone, W1U and W1G: who is close, and how soon
Two landed estates drew this district, and they drew it on paper before a brick was laid on it. The ground east of the High Street was laid out for one family and the ground west of Baker Street for another, and the result is straight streets, right angles and squares dropped in at intervals, which is not at all how older parts of London grew. The buildings worth stopping at are the ones that break the grid.
So this page takes the ones that do: a square let on what was still a field, a cul de sac off Oxford Street closed by a stone front, two churches of the same decade that look nothing alike, and a civic pile in Portland stone at the top of the zone. Two of the twenty eight names on the board live inside W1U and W1G, which is the short way of saying a question about tonight here normally has an answer. Marylebone escorts keep the district's own hours, and those are ordinary dinner hours.
On the ground
Marylebone in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameW1U 7PA, W1B 1JA, W1G 8DN, W1H 7JB, NW1 6QN, NW1 6JQ.
Nearest stations
Walking timeBaker Street, 4 minutes. Bond Street, 6 minutes. Regent's Park, 7 minutes. Marylebone, 8 minutes.
Getting there
W1U, W1GTravel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Marylebone
Who works here
On the board in Marylebone
Liana and Rosa give Marylebone as the zone they work most, and the eight prints above are the nearest on the board tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
A square let on what was still a field
Portman Square was begun in 1764, on ground the Portman family had held since the sixteenth century and which was still farmland when the first building leases were signed. It went up as brick houses round a private garden at the western edge of the built up town, and it set the pattern for everything on that side: long streets running north and south, squares at the crossings, service lanes behind.
Very little of the original brick survives on the square itself. What survives is the shape, and the shape is the whole point. Once you have noticed how regular it is, the rest of the zone reads as one drawing rather than as a neighbourhood that accumulated.
Note 03
The cul de sac off Oxford Street
Stratford Place opens off the north side of Oxford Street as a short cul de sac, closed at its head by a stone fronted house of the 1770s built for Edward Stratford, later the second Earl of Aldborough. It is the only street of its kind on that side of the shops: a private approach with a house set across the end of it, as though a country seat had been dropped into a retail parade.
The site was not picked at random. The City of London had kept a banqueting house here beside the conduit heads that fed its water supply, and the ground was let for building once the conduits were no longer wanted. The house at the head of the street stands where the banqueting house stood.
Note 04
Two churches from the same decade
Hinde Street Methodist Church stands on the corner of Thayer Street, rebuilt in the 1880s on the site of an earlier chapel, behind a columned front with a pair of turrets above it. It is the tallest thing on that corner and the easiest building in the village to give a stranger as a meeting point, which is a use architecture does not always manage.
A few streets west, St James's on George Street was built in the same decade and could not be less like it: tall, narrow, Gothic, with a nave a good deal higher than the street outside prepares you for. It is known as Spanish Place, after the street beside it, because the congregation began in the chapel of the Spanish embassy that once stood in Manchester Square.
Note 05
Portland stone at the top of the zone
The northern edge is a different kind of architecture altogether. The old town hall, now Westminster Council House, was designed by Sir Edwin Cooper and finished about 1920 in Portland stone behind a screen of columns. That is the civic manner of its moment exactly: heavy, symmetrical, and meant to be read from the far side of a wide road rather than from the pavement in front of it.
A few doors along, an office block called Ferguson House carries a carved stone panel of Dickens characters set into its front. It marks the site of the Devonshire Terrace house where Dickens lived for a dozen years and wrote a fair share of what he is still read for. The house went; the panel is the memorial that replaced it, and almost nobody walking past looks up at it.
Note 06
Manchester Square, and the streets that leave it
Manchester Square was laid out from the 1770s, a generation after Portman Square and on the other estate's ground, with a garden in the middle that is still railed and a large house closing the northern side. The streets that leave it are shorter and narrower than anything on the Portman side, Spanish Place among them, and they are the part of W1U that most rewards a slow walk.
Baker Street is four minutes on foot from the northern end of the district and carries five lines between them. The hotel addresses in and around the village run from the Marylebone Road down to the shops, which is the only fact about them anybody needs before choosing where to eat.
Note 07
Who is on the board in W1U and W1G tonight
Two names on the board give this village as their own ground. Liana takes dinner bookings here and treats a wine list as part of the evening rather than as a test of anybody. Rosa knows the small kitchens better than anyone else on the board and will order pudding for both of you before you have decided. Escorts in Marylebone tend to be asked for by people who have already tried the obvious districts.
Anyone else on the board reaches W1U and W1G without difficulty. Allow about an hour once the office confirms, longer while the Marylebone Road is heavy, and the lengths sit on the rates page. The exact time arrives in the chat when she leaves.
Note 08
Where the grid gives out
South across Oxford Street the plan tightens up and Mayfair begins. North across the Marylebone Road the terraces stop at the edge of Regent's Park and the scale changes in one step. East past the consulting room streets lies Great Portland Street, and west beyond Baker Street the Portman ground carries on towards Marble Arch.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Marylebone
Asked most often
Marylebone, asked and answered
When was Portman Square laid out, and on whose land?
What closes the end of Stratford Place?
Why is a church here called Spanish Place?
What is the carved panel on the Marylebone Road?
What was the columned building at the top of the district built as?
One zone either way
Next along from Marylebone
escorts in Great Portland Street
W1WSame ladder, same honest hour, one zone further across the map.
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.