Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
WALK 2: MARYLEBONE AND BOND
STREET
Starting Location:
Marble Arch.
Nearest tube station:
Marble Arch.
Length:
2.25 miles.
Opening hours:
December), from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Marble Arch is close to the site of Tyburn gallows, but by the time Jane Austen was
born the procession of the condemned through the streets amidst jeering, cheering
crowds was thought distasteful - and, perhaps more influentially, it disturbed the peace of
the fashionable residents of the new developments north of Oxford Street. Public executions
were moved to Newgate prison in 1783.
Walk up Great Cumberland Place, the location of the American Legation chancery in
1805, and turn left into Upper Berkeley Street. The elegant streets and squares that were
developed in the Marylebone district north of Oxford Street in the late eighteenth century
attracted gentry, nobility and the higher echelons of the professions. There was a consider-
able variety in the size of houses available, from grand mansions to modest dwellings like
the one where Henry and Eliza Austen lived between 1801 and 1804.
The district also retained some rough edges including a huge cattle yard just off the Edg-
ware Road. The beasts must have been audible, and, when the wind was right, the smell
would have wafted over the smart streets.
The Austens lived close to this nuisance in some style at No. 24 on the north side of the
street, employing a French cook and keeping a carriage.
