Gloucester Place
Gloucester Place is one of Marylebone's principal north-south streets, running from Portman Square in the south through to the NW1 boundary near Dorset Square, with its central sections falling within the W1U postcode. The street was named after the Duke of Gloucester, younger brother of King George III, and was laid out from the late eighteenth century as part of the Portman Estate's expansion into a fashionable residential district.
Construction of the terraces proceeded primarily between approximately 1790 and 1810, and the street preserves one of the most extensive intact sequences of Georgian terraced housing in central London. Numerous buildings carry Grade II listed status, recognised by Historic England for their architectural quality. The entire length falls within the Portman Estate Conservation Area, designated by Westminster City Council in 1967.
Among the street's most notable former residents is the novelist Wilkie Collins, who lived at what was then 90 Gloucester Place, now renumbered as 65, from 1867 to 1888. An English Heritage blue plaque was erected at the address in 1951. The novelist Arnold Bennett also lived on the street in the early twentieth century. Gloucester Place connects the more formal Georgian squares of the Portman Estate to the south with the Marylebone Road corridor to the north. Portman Square at its southern end represents the most complete surviving example of the estate's original formal planning.
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