Escorts in Pimlico, SW1V: who is close, and how soon
Pimlico is the grid of pale stucco streets that fills the ground between Victoria station and the Thames, with Vauxhall Bridge Road along its eastern side and the railway into Victoria along its western one. Most of it is homes: terraces built for single households and long since split into flats, three large twentieth century estates, and one of the best known blocks of flats in London. It is a postcode of front doors and buzzers at least as much as of lobbies.
Escorts in Pimlico visit hotel rooms and private addresses alike, and the private ones come in more shapes here than almost anywhere in the middle of town. Two names on the board, Lucy and Roxi, live inside SW1V. What follows is the housing itself, street by street, because the kind of building decides what the office needs to know before she sets out.
On the ground
Pimlico in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameSW1V 4QQ, SW1V 1EQ, SW1V 1QA, SW1W 0JW.
Nearest stations
Walking timePimlico, 2 minutes. Victoria, 8 minutes. Vauxhall, 12 minutes.
Getting there
SW1VTravel 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 Pimlico
Who works here
On the board in Pimlico
Lucy and Roxi give Pimlico 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
Cubitt's streets, and the numbers on the columns
Most of Pimlico was built from the 1820s onwards by Thomas Cubitt, on land belonging to the Grosvenor estate, as a quieter and less expensive cousin of Belgravia to the north. The result is a near-regular grid of stucco terraces, four and five storeys over a basement, each house with a pillared porch and, very often, its number painted on a column rather than on the door.
Several streets repeat the same front for their whole length, so an address here is only useful when it is exact. A number read off a porch pillar under a streetlamp is quick to find; a house described as the one with the dark door is not.
Note 03
The squares, behind their railings
The grid opens out into garden squares. Eccleston Square and Warwick Square sit in the northern half, closer to Victoria, and St George's Square, the largest, runs all the way down to Grosvenor Road with the river beyond it. Their gardens are fenced with railings and kept for the people who live round them.
A house on a square looks grand from the pavement, but inside it is usually arranged like the streets behind: a shared hall, a staircase, and a flat on each floor. Living on a square changes the view from the window, not the way in.
Note 04
A column of bells: the divided houses
Hardly any of the terraces are still single houses. Most were divided into flats long ago, so a Pimlico front door usually carries a column of bells, one for each floor, while the basement flat has its own door down the steps below the pavement railings.
That makes three details matter more than the street name: the flat number, the bell or buzzer it answers to, and whether your door is the one at the top of the porch steps or the one below the pavement. Send those with the address and she rings the right bell first time. If you would rather meet her on the pavement, say so in the same message.
Note 05
Dolphin Square, on the river road
On Grosvenor Road stands Dolphin Square, a single vast block of more than a thousand flats built round a central garden in the mid 1930s, and for a time the largest self-contained block of flats in Europe. Its position, a walk along the river from Parliament, has made it a London home for members of both Houses for generations.
A building that size works like a small town. Its flats are grouped into houses named after admirals and navigators, Drake and Nelson among them, so an address there needs the house name as well as the flat number.
Note 06
Churchill Gardens, and the heat from across the water
West of Dolphin Square, between Lupus Street and the river, is Churchill Gardens: the estate Powell and Moya designed after winning a competition in 1946, built in stages into the early 1960s as long parallel blocks of flats set among lawns and plane trees. Beside it stands a glass-walled tower that once held hot water piped under the Thames from Battersea Power Station, heating the estate's homes with the station's spare heat.
The blocks are long, so give the office the block, the flat number and the entrance you use. With those, finding a door on the estate is simple.
Note 07
Lillington Gardens and the church at its heart
At the other end of Pimlico, on Vauxhall Bridge Road, Lillington Gardens takes the opposite approach: low-rise flats in red brick by Darbourne and Darke, built from the mid 1960s into the 1970s, stepped back with planted terraces and raised walkways. In the middle of it stands St James the Less, a Victorian Gothic church by George Edmund Street in patterned red and black brick with a separate tower, which the estate was built around.
Its walkways and stairs make it easy to arrive at the wrong corner, so say which street entrance is nearest your door.
Note 08
Around Pimlico
Tate Britain stands on Millbank at the eastern edge, and beyond it the river leads to Westminster. North west, across the railway, the stucco grows grander and the streets become Belgravia. West along Grosvenor Road, past Churchill Gardens, the embankment reaches Chelsea Bridge.
Whatever the door, allow about an hour between the office's yes and her ring at the bell, more at rush hour, with her exact timing given in the chat and each length priced on the rates.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Pimlico
Asked most often
Pimlico, asked and answered
The houses on my street all look alike. How will she find mine?
Which door should she use if my flat is below the pavement?
Is Dolphin Square arranged like any other address?
My flat is on one of the estates. What should I send?
One zone either way
Next along from Pimlico
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.