Survey of London: Volume 45, Knightsbridge

This volume describes a district today synonymous with wealth and smartness. The area covered includes the old thoroughfare of Knightsbridge itself, and the triangular swathe of land to its west, north of Brompton Road, bounded on the north by Hyde Park and on the west by Exhibition Road. In addition to the hotels, shops and fashionable houses and apartments for which the area is known today, the volume also describes the fabric of Knightsbridge's more diverse past: the medieval hamlet, straggling out along the road to Kensington; the string of aristocratic mansions, such as Kingston House, that in the eighteenth century lined the south side of the road west of Knightsbridge Green; the famous Tattershall's horse-mart at Knightsbridge Green; the Japanese Native Village of the mid-1880s, from which W. S. Gilbert drew inspiration for 'The Mikado'; and Whistler's legendary Peacock Room at 49 Princes Gate, the greatest of all Aesthetic interiors. Also included is Sir Basil Spence's Knightsbridge Barracks, still providing a Brutalist modern concrete home to the military pageantry of the Horse Guards.

Survey of London.

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