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Garbutt Place
Garbutt Place is a compact residential street in Marylebone, carrying a postcode of W1U and lying within the broader Marylebone Village area. Its historical significance is considerably greater than its modest dimensions suggest. The street was formerly known as Paradise Place, and it was here in 1865 that the social reformer Octavia Hill began her first housing scheme, purchasing three badly deteriorated houses with financial support from the critic and philanthropist John Ruskin.
Hill's own account of the conditions she encountered remains striking: plaster falling from walls, a pail set to catch rain coming through the roof. Her approach at Paradise Place became the model she would replicate across London, insisting that landlords provide habitable properties while tenants maintained them, and demonstrating that this arrangement could be both financially viable and socially constructive. By 1874 she was running fifteen such schemes. Hill later co-founded the National Trust.
Today 2 Garbutt Place carries a plaque commemorating Hill's work, unveiled to mark the site of that first experiment. The street itself retains a quiet residential character, with period facades and the intimate scale typical of Marylebone's secondary streets. Its proximity to Marylebone High Street places it within easy reach of the neighbourhood's principal amenities, while remaining removed from the commercial activity of the high street itself.
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