Davies Street Area: St. Anslem's Place

St. Anselm's Place

Like Mount Row, St. Anselm's Place was originally two separate stable yards, one, sometimes called One Tun Yard and during the nineteenth century generally known as Cock Yard, entered from Davies Street, and the other, called Three Horseshoe Yard or simply Horseshoe Yard after a tavern which stood at its entrance, from Gilbert Street. In the 1820's the builder Seth Smith erected new coach-houses and stables on the north side of each yard and made a passage between them. (fn. 1) The name Cock Yard gradually came to be applied to the whole mews until 1939 when it was changed to St. Anselm's Place.

The north side is now dominated by the huge bulk of the British Council's building (No. 65 Davies Street), but on the south side, which was occupied by the coach-houses and stables of houses on the north side of Brook Street, the rebuildings and conversions have retained the intimate scale of the original buildings. No. 23 was built in 1966–7 to the designs of Claud Phillimore as a private residence for the fourth Duke of Westminster, who, however, died shortly before the house was completed. (fn. 2) It is an attractive two-storey mews house in yellow stock bricks, the ancestry of which is suggested by three wide arches with red-brick headers on the ground floor. No. 24 is a conversion of stabling, probably late nineteenth century in date, with painted brickwork and a triangular gable. No. 25 is a discreet, two-storey neo-Georgian rebuilding of 1939 to the design of Robert Lutyens, (fn. 3) apparently re-using the existing bricks which are now painted. No. 26 is a conversion of a coach-house and stables, which, from its M-shaped hipped roof, may even date from the building of No. 74 Brook Street in 1725–6. No. 27 is the former stabling of No. 76 Brook Street and was rebuilt in 1911. (fn. 4) The most notable feature of No. 28 is its long, low return front to Gilbert Street which is only one storey high and has painted brickwork and four pairs of windows, each with individual hipped roofs. The steep downward slope of the entrance into St. Anselm's Place, however, allows for two storeys on the inner side of the building where a coachhouse has been converted into a garage. This was formerly the stabling of No. 78 Brook Street and may not have been completely rebuilt when that house was rebuilt in 1873–4, although it was certainly extended. In 1881 the builders Clarke and Mannooch made extensive alterations to the coach-house and stables including raising and refixing the roof to the 'mess room', (fn. 5) and in 1889 the Duke of Westminster also paid for work done here under the supervision of W. D. Caröe (architect of the adjacent Hanover Branch Schools), probably in connexion with the demolition of the Three Horseshoes public house, which had abutted on the north wall of the stables. (fn. 6)