Property Description
Hyde Park Gardens Mews is a cobbled through road, approached through its own arch on Clarendon Place in Westminster, opposite Clarendon Mews, another original/ surviving Mews. There are 46 properties in the Mews, used for residential purposes.
A high explosive bomb fell onto Hyde Park Gardens just below the Mews in World War II, affecting the properties and requiring them to be rebuilt. When the London Poverty Maps were published, the area was determined as being normal in comparison to the standard household salaries at the time, with comfortable living conditions.
Hyde Park Gardens 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, two and three storey buildings with a mixture of mansard and parapet roof styles. The garages present are a mixture of intact and converted and surrounded by a cobbled road surface. Numbers 1-21 and the archway to Clarendon Place are Listed Buildings.
Everchanging Nature
The original purpose of the Mews was to provide stable/ coach house accommodation to the main houses on Hyde Park Gardens. Now, it is predominantly used for residential purposes.
Many planning applications have been made since 2003 for alterations to the properties, mainly concerning roof extensions, changes to the fenestration and basement excavations. Conservation Area controls now apply to new development in the Mews.
On January 22nd 2014, a fire broke out in the Mews, completely destroying one of the properties. Read more here.