No listings found in this category yet
Check back soon — we're always adding new businesses.
Homer Street
Homer Street runs parallel to and east of Homer Row, connecting Old Marylebone Road in the north to Crawford Street in the south. A one-way street in the W1H postcode, it forms part of the Portman Estate's classical street-name cluster that also includes Cato Street and Virgil Place.
As with Homer Row, the classical name is attributed not to a grand antiquarian gesture but to a specific local connection. The historian Gillian Bebbington recorded that the name derives from Edward Homer, a friend of John Simon Harcourt, who owned the land on which these streets were developed under the Portman Estate framework.
Charles Booth's poverty survey map of 1898-99 classified Homer Street as purple, denoting a mixed street where comfortable households and poorer ones lived side by side. Census returns of the same period confirm this: houses in multiple occupation stood alongside properties occupied by residents of independent means, and one town house was used as an orphanage by the Church Army. This social mixture was characteristic of Marylebone's western fringe before twentieth-century redevelopment.
A notable piece of social housing history attaches to the street. Freshwater Place, off Homer Street, was an early social housing experiment by reformer Octavia Hill, though it was demolished in 1961.
Today the street is predominantly residential, retaining its modest Portman Estate terrace character.
The Our Gazette
Delivered weekly to your inbox
Join 12,000+ Our insiders
