Around TownW1U · W1GPlatform to lobby: 4 min from Baker Street
Marylebone escorts after the shops shut, from Vere Street to Wigmore Street
Marylebone was drawn on paper before anybody lived in it. A Harley married a Cavendish heiress, their surveyors ruled straight lines across the fields, and the new streets were christened after the family's properties in other counties: Wigmore, Welbeck, Bolsover, Bentinck, Mansfield. None of those names has anything to do with this ground.
What the estate built is mostly still standing, and what the shops built on top of it is the better half: a chapel with a cupola on Vere Street, a drapery front in white glazed tiles, a recital room put up by a piano firm and a concrete car park that has gone. Marylebone escorts come to W1U and W1G once the windows have gone dark, and two of the women on the list keep their own front doors inside those two postcodes.
Stations and lit lobbies
Walking minutes from the nearest platforms, and the hotels around Marylebone worth knowing by postcode. They are listed as landmarks, never as partners: any reputable hotel, serviced apartment or private address is welcome.
Nearest stations
- Baker StreetBakerloo, Circle, Hammersmith and City, Jubilee, Metropolitan4 min walk
- Bond StreetCentral, Jubilee, Elizabeth line6 min walk
- Regent's ParkBakerloo7 min walk
- MaryleboneBakerloo, National Rail8 min walk
Hotels as landmarks
- W1U 7PAMarylebone
- W1B 1JAMarylebone
- W1G 8DNMarylebone
- W1H 7JBMarylebone
- NW1 6QNMarylebone
- NW1 6JQMarylebone
Who comes to Marylebone
Companions whose home districts sit nearest to Marylebone, so the ride over is short. Everyone in The Selection travels here on request.
Liana
Age 28Marylebone
Rosa
Age 25Marylebone
Luna
Age 22Mayfair
Samanta
Age 27Mayfair
Angelika
Age 24Mayfair
Jasmin
Age 22Soho
Molly
Age 24Soho
Tiffany
Age 24Soho
Names borrowed from other counties
Wigmore Street carries the name of Wigmore in Herefordshire, where the Harleys held land. Welbeck Street is named for Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire, Bolsover Street for a castle in the same county, and Bentinck and Mansfield come out of the same family connection. The habit tells you what sort of development this was: a landed estate turning grazing into building leases and advertising itself on the corner plates.
The plan it produced is unusually obedient for London: long runs north to south, short crossings east to west, mews tucked in behind for the horses, and a chapel dropped where a parish church would have stood if there had been a village here first. Then the grid stops dead, at the Marylebone Road, cut across open ground in 1756 as the New Road so that drovers need not take their animals down Oxford Street.
The chapel on Vere Street
St Peter's, Vere Street, went up in the 1720s to a design by James Gibbs, as a chapel of ease for streets that were still being finished. It is small, of brick, and nearly domestic from the pavement: a modest cupola over the roof, a front that would not stop you if you were walking past. Gibbs was busy with grander commissions in those years; the restraint was deliberate. A chapel for leaseholders, not a monument.
It has not been a parish church for a long time and the building is now in other hands. As streetscape it still earns its keep, breaking a run of house fronts with something taller and paler.
White tiles, and what was behind them
In 1907 a drapery firm raised a new store on Wigmore Street and faced it in white glazed tiles, floor upon floor of them, with tall windows set between. Glaze was practical in a coal burning city because it washed clean, and it read as money from the far pavement. The firm is long gone; the front is not, and on a grey afternoon it is the brightest thing on the street.
That is the pattern across both postcodes: an eighteenth century plan with Edwardian and later retail pushed into the ground floors. Above the fascia boards the brick, the sash openings and the cornice lines usually run unbroken the length of the terrace.
A recital room built by a piano shop
Wigmore Hall opened in 1901 under the name Bechstein Hall. The German piano makers Bechstein built it next to their own showroom so that a customer could hear an instrument played properly before buying one, which makes it a demonstration room that grew into one of London's concert halls.
The name changed because of the war: the hall was sold off as enemy property in 1916 and reopened under its present name in 1917, and the showroom next door has been several other things since. A good room outlives the trade that paid for it.
The concrete that came and went
For about fifty years Welbeck Street had a multi storey car park with a precast front of concrete diamonds, built for a department store that wanted somewhere for its customers to leave their cars. It came down in 2019, and the argument about whether concrete of that kind deserves keeping has comfortably outlived it.
The gap shows how thin the polite surface is here. Behind nearly every terraced front is something from another century doing the actual work: a service yard, a plant room, a loading bay with the shutter down by seven.
Arriving once the tiles go dark
Baker Street station is a four minute walk, and Bond Street station six. Neither counts for much in a booking here, because two of the women on the list live inside W1U and W1G and reach their own postcode on foot. Whoever comes, the hour she sets out is written into the thread as she goes.
Send Clementine the street, the hour you want the door to open and how long the evening runs. She answers with one name and one figure, checks the building and the room number once, and then, as a rule, an hour goes by before the knock. The fee is handed over when your companion arrives, and from £250 an hour it buys her time and her company and nothing besides; her cab to any door in Zones 1 and 2 is already counted in, and past Zone 2 the taxi is worked out and shown as one sum in the confirmation before you agree, all of it on the rates.
Where the brick changes
Baker Street closes the western side, where the terraces give way to office fronts. Regent's Park begins beyond the New Road, and the planning turns grander and curved as it goes. Great Portland Street runs down the eastern edge, and Oxford Street along the bottom, where the ground floors stop pretending to be houses at all.
Marylebone, asked
The former drapery store of 1907, glazed white from the first floor upwards. The firm has gone and the front has not, and it is the easiest building on the street to pick out on a dull day.
It was. It opened in 1901 as Bechstein Hall, put up by the piano makers next to their own showroom so a buyer could hear an instrument properly. It was sold as enemy property in 1916 and renamed the year after.
James Gibbs, in the 1720s, as a chapel of ease for the new streets. It is brick, small and plainer than the churches he is remembered for, with a cupola and very little else.
No. It came down in 2019, after a long argument about whether concrete of that kind is worth keeping. The precast diamonds exist in photographs now and nowhere else.
Because they were built to let. The estate sold building leases, the builders kept their ornament for the doorcase and the railings, and everything above the ground floor was repeated as cheaply as the lease allowed.
Read before you go
- 5 min readMarylebone after dark: the quiet alternative, one soft chair at a timeWhen the West End turns the volume up, Marylebone turns it down. Wine rooms, hotel lounges, booth-lined pubs and a concert hall, arranged into an evening where you can hear every word.
- 5 min readFront doors on a Georgian terrace: the small hotels of MaryleboneGeorgian terraces turned into small hotels, where a knock on the door feels like calling at a private address. Three to know, what sets them apart, and how an evening visit works.
Lights on in Marylebone
Write the hotel or street in Marylebone, the time and how long. Inside Zones 1 and 2 the ride over costs nothing.