57 And 59, Marlborough Place Nw8

Nos. 57 and 59 Marlborough Place are a pair of semi-detached houses built around 1840, with late 20th-century alterations. They are constructed of yellow London Stock brick with stuccoed dressings and timber sliding sash windows. The roof is set back behind a stuccoed parapet.

The façade comprises three storeys with a raised basement and is five bays wide. The marginal bays are set back from the main front and contain entrances under projecting Doric porches, both with triglyph friezes, cornices with mutules and pilasters. The main body of the building is treated as a single architectural entity, with the central projecting bay and western bay comprising one dwelling, and the two eastern bays comprising the other. Stuccoed quoins mark the margins and central bay. String courses run to the first and second floors, topped by a deep plain stucco cornice. All windows have stucco surrounds; those on the ground floor feature pointed pediments, those above have plainer flat friezes and cornices. The central bays have tripartite sash windows; the others have single sashes with recessed frames. Cast iron balconies are present to ground and first floors. Raised entrances are approached by flights of stone steps; those to No. 59 were rebuilt in the late 20th century. Both houses have been extended to east and west in the 20th century, and the rear is much altered. A glazed canopy covering the approach from the street, described at the time of original listing in 1975, has been removed.

In No. 59, the ground floor principal rooms, hall and passages retain decorative plasterwork, elaborate door cases and doors, and chimney pieces of late 20th-century date, except for a chimney piece of late 18th-century date in the rear room, which is an importation. The interior layout reflects the mid-19th-century arrangement, with a raised ground floor of informal plan, an entrance hall leading to a stair hall running at 90 degrees along the building's axis, a large room to the front, and two rooms to the rear. A timber cantilevered stair with cast iron balusters rises to the second floor. The first floor is more altered, though the upper floor retains a more legible layout. The roof structure, though not inspected, is understood to have been entirely replaced and reconfigured in the late 20th century. The interior of No. 57 was not inspected.

Marlborough Place lies close to the centre of St. John's Wood, the first and most celebrated of London's 19th-century suburbs. The Eyre Estate to the north of Marylebone Road was acquired by Henry Simon Eyre, a City merchant, in 1732 and was amongst the last substantial family estates to be settled. The earliest plans for development date from 1794, proposing inner and outer circus drives, though this layout was never executed. A modified version appeared in 1803, but the resumption of the Napoleonic conflict in that year prevented implementation. What was common to both plans and to the actual pattern of development when building commenced in the 1820s was the provision of semi-detached villas set in generous grounds. This pattern was sustained on the Eyre Estate and the adjacent Portland Estate through to the mid-19th century, supplemented with traditional terraces. This influential sylvan residential enclave set the pattern for suburban development of London and many other English cities and towns for the next century, and represents a very significant phase in the evolution of urban planning in England.

Marlborough Place was first rated in 1829. The 1834 map of St Marylebone and Paddington by Bartlett and Britton shows development in the first section of Marlborough Road west of Abbey Road, with fields at the site where Nos. 57 and 59 were subsequently built around 1840. The property appears with three other pairs of houses at this location on the St Marylebone Parish map of 1846. The house was split into four flats in the early 1950s, one of which was temporarily occupied by composer Benjamin Britten, before reverting to a single dwelling in the early 1990s.