Living In St Johns Wood
The Flat at Winchester Place is located between St Johns Wood and Swiss Cottage. St Johns Wood has an interesting history.
St. John’s Wood was once part of the Great Forest of Middlesex. The name comes from its mediaeval owners, the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem ( Knights Hospitallers ), an Augustinian order, which took control of the land from the Knights Templar in 1323. After the Reformation and the Dissolution of monastic orders, St John’s Wood became Crown land, and Henry VIII established Royal Hunting Grounds in what came to be known as Marylebone Park, to the north of which lay St John’s Wood. Aside from brief periods in the reign of Mary Tudor and Cromwell’s Protectorate ( when almost all of the trees were felled, none of which might have occurred if the Society had then existed ), the area called the St John’s Wood Estate stayed Crown land till 1688. Till the end of the eighteenth century, when plans for home development first appeared, the area remained in rural use.
Aside from a little piece of land, around Barrow Hill, which belonged to the Portland Estate, almost all of St John’s Wood had been purchased in 1732 by the Eyre family.
A second, smaller estate, lying next to the Edgware Road, had been purchased by John Lyon in 1574 : the estate was later left by him to his foundation, Harrow School, on trust to maintain the roads between London and Harrow in good repair . Building began in 1809 in Alpha Road, on the southern boundary of St John’s Wood, ( these villas have long since gone with the appearance of the train line in 1894 ) and quickly spread over the 2 estates. It had been a unique pattern of development : as the respected architectural historian, Sir John Summerson wrote : it was actually the first part of London, and indeed of another city, to desert the patio house for the semi-detached villa a revolution of striking significance and far reaching effect. The relatively cheap Italianate villas, Cottages Orns and Victorian Gothic pairs, encircled by large gardens and tree-lined avenues, attracted many that valued the charm of living in rustic calm so near to the town. Many artists, writers, thinkers and scientists made their houses in St John’s Wood across the nineteenth century.
They were joined by workers and merchants, who gave to St John’s Wood its hamlet atmosphere, which survives to this day. Though lots of the first homes and gardens vanished in the twentieth century, thru bomb damage and the building of new roads, railways, blocks of studios, hospitals, faculties, lots of the original character of the area remains. In the 1960s, most of St John’s Wood was appointed a Conservation Area and its homes listed by English Heritage. In 1814, Lord’s cricket ground moved to its present site and St. John’s Church was hallowed. In 1825, the Riding College , now part of the Royal Pony Artillery Barracks, was finished, and in 1836, St Marylebone Almshouses were built ( re-built on the same site in 1965 ), and the Roman Catholic Church of Our Woman .
In 1847 St. Mark’s Church, Hamilton Patio was hallowed. All these historic features are still distinguished in the life of St John’s Wood today, and along with more fresh developments ,eg Abbey Road Studios and the Central London Mosque, continue giving St John’s Wood its unique personality.
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