Green Street, London

An entrancing entrance

The late-19th century saw a lot of building activity in the Grosvenor Estate, that chunk of Mayfair owned by the Duke of Westminster. Green Street was one place where a number of new houses were built. The low numbers on the northern side of the street consists mainly of a run of brick houses that were speculatively built, but this particular house was a bespoke design. It was originally for the Hon St John Brodrick, but according to the Survey of London, Brodrick decided he couldn’t afford the house, so it passed to other owners who kept Brodrick’s choice of architects, Balfour and Turner.

Eustace Balfour and Thackeray Turner were from very different backgrounds. Balfour was Scottish and was the Harrow- and Cambridge-educated nephew of the former Prime Minister the Marquis of Salisbury and brother to a future PM, A J Balfour. As such he could talk to the aristocratic owners of the Grosvenor Estate, for whom his firm worked as surveyors, or almost equal social terms. Turner was a grammar-school boy from Wiltshire with a passion for old churches; he was a friend of Arts and Crafts luminary W J Lethaby. In spite of their different backgrounds, Balfour and Turner seem to have got on, going into partnership in the early 1880s and continuing until Balfour’s death in 1911. They shared an interest in the Arts and Crafts movement, a commitment to the work of the SPAB, and an ability to create work with considerable visual flair. They were kept busy in such Mayfair streets as Brook Street, Grosvenor Street, Green Street, and Balfour Street.

This house stands out both for its overall design, with its stone oriels, and the fine details. Loveliest of these details is the carving by the door, which Pevsner describes as a tree of life. It is probably by Laurence Turner, the sculptor brother of Thackeray Turner. It’s a wonderful urban alternative to the rural fashion for roses around the door.