Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Faraday's explorations into electromagnetism - there's even a reconstruction of Faraday's
lab from the 1850s. The ground floor has displays on the fourteen Nobel Prize winners
who have worked at the RI, while on the first floor, you can visit the semicircular hall
where the Christmas Lectures take place and see some of the apparatus used in lectures
over the decades. There's also a great café-bar-restaurant on the ground floor.
Savile Row
Running parallel with New Bond Street, to the east,
Savile Row
has been
the
place to go
for bespoke tailors since the early nineteenth century. Gieves & Hawkes,
at no. 1,
were the
first to establish themselves here back in 1785, with Nelson and Wellington among their
first customers - they made the military uniform worn by Prince William at his wedding.
More modern in outlook, Kilgour, at no. 8, famously made Fred Astaire's morning coat
for
Top Hat
, helping to popularize Savile Row tailoring in the US. Henry Poole & Co,
who moved to no. 15 in 1846 and has cut suits for the likes of Napoleon III, Dickens,
Churchill and de Gaulle, invented the short smoking jacket (originally designed for the
future Edward VII), later popularized as the “tuxedo”.
Savile Row also has connections with the pop world.
The Beatles
used to buy their
suits from Tommy Nutter's House of Nutter established in 1968 at no. 35, and in the
same year set up the o
ces and recording studio of their record label
Apple
at no. 3,
until the building's near physical collapse in 1972. On January 30, 1969, The Beatles
gave an impromptu gig (their last live performance) on the roof here, stopping tra
c
and eventually attracting the attentions of the local police - as captured on film in
Let It Be
. More recently feathers have been ru
ed in the street by the arrival of the
American label, Abercrombie & Fitch, at the southern end of Savile Row, with its
trademark semi-nude shop assistants.
3
Mayfair's squares
Mayfair has three showpiece Georgian squares:
Hanover
, the most modest of the three,
Berkeley,
and
Grosvenor
, the most grandiose, named after the district's two big private
landowners. Planned as purely residential, all have suffered over the years, and have
nothing like the homogeneity of the Bloomsbury squares. Nevertheless, they are still
impressive urban spaces, and their social lustre remains more or less untarnished. Each
one is worth visiting, and travelling between them gives you a chance to experience
Mayfair's backstreets and, en route, visit one or two hidden sights.
St George's Church, Hanover Square
1-2 Hanover Square • Mon-Fri 8am-4pm, Wed till-6pm, Sun 8am-noon • Free •
W
stgeorgeshanoversquare.org •
!
Bond Street
At the very southern tip of
Hanover Square
stands the Corinthian portico of
St George's Church
, the first of its kind in London when it was built in the 1720s.
Nicknamed “London's Temple of Hymen”, it has long been Mayfair's most fashionable
church for weddings. Among those who tied the knot here are the Shelleys, Benjamin
Disraeli, Teddy Roosevelt and George Eliot. The composer, Handel, a confirmed
bachelor, was a warden here for many years and even had his own pew. North of the
church, the funnel-shaped St George Street splays into the square itself, which used to
boast the old Hanover Square Rooms venue, where Bach, Liszt, Haydn and Paganini
all performed before the building's demolition in 1900.
Handel House Museum
25 Brook St • Tues-Sat 10am-6pm, Thurs till 8pm, Sun noon-6pm • £6 •
T
020 7495 1685,
W
handelhouse.org •
!
Bond Street
he
Handel House Museum
, one block west of Hanover Square, is where the composer
Handel lived for 36 years from 1723 until his death. He used the ground floor as a
shop where subscribers could buy scores, while on the first floor, there was a rehearsal
