Property Description
Pickering Mews is a cobbled, gated cul-de-sac, accessed from Bishops Bridge Road in Westminster. There are 4 properties in the Mews, used for commercial purposes. It is located on the site of an original Mews but has been re-developed to a degree that it no longer contains any surviving Mews properties.
A high explosive bomb fell onto Queensway, just above the Mews in World War II. When the London Poverty Maps were published, the area was determined as being well off, middle class in comparison to the standard household salaries at the time, with comfortable living conditions.
Pickering Mews is part of Westminster City Council’s Bayswater Conservation Area. Developed over the space of about 70 years, the townscape is uniform despite being composed of several distinct areas and is made up of a regular composition of streets and squares in an Italianate style. An important aspect of the street pattern are the several mews, some quite intimate and others so large that they appear to be a development of their own. The contrast of scale provided by these mews is a crucial aspect of the overall area’s character.
The Mews has painted and rendered brickwork, one and two storey buildings with a mixture of flat, parapet and gable roof styles. The garages present are intact and surrounded by a cobbled road surface.
Everchanging Nature
The original purpose of the Mews was to provide stable/ coach house accommodation to the main houses on the surrounding streets.
Very few planning applications have been made since 2003 for alterations to the main properties rather than the Mews buildings themselves. Conservation Area controls now apply to new development in the Mews.