Seymour Place in Marylebone

Seymour Place

Seymour Place is a substantial north-south street in the west of Marylebone, running from Seymour Street northward to Marylebone Road, where it meets Lisson Grove. It falls within the W1H postal district and forms one of the principal arteries of the Portman Estate, which has owned and managed this part of Marylebone since the sixteenth century. The street is named after Anne Seymour, mother of Henry William Portman, through whom he inherited the estate. Her marriage into the Portman family gave her name to both Seymour Place and the parallel Seymour Street to the south.

The street was laid out as part of the Portman Estate's residential expansion in the eighteenth century, when London's Georgian growth pushed northward from Oxford Street. Many of the original terraced houses north of Portman Square were later redeveloped as mansion blocks. Between the wars, architect W. E. Masters designed a series of substantial apartment buildings along the street, including Sherwood Court, built around 1929, which represents the confident interwar scale that distinguishes Seymour Place from the finer Georgian grain of streets to the east.

Today the street functions as both a residential address and a local dining destination, with a cluster of restaurants occupying ground-floor premises. The Portman Estate remains the freeholder across much of the street. For the wider historic context of this part of west Marylebone, Portman Square to the south provides the formal centrepiece from which these streets radiate.