Lisson Grove is a street and district in Marylebone, City of Westminster, London. The neighbourhood contains a few important cultural landmarks, including Lisson Gallery, Alfies Antique Market, Red Bus Recording Studios, the former Christ Church, now the Greenhouse Centre, and the Seashell of Lisson Grove.
The heart of the community and retail/services zone is Church Street Market, which runs between Lisson Grove itself and Edgware Road.The market specialises in antiques and bric-à-brac, and has flourished since the 1960s. The area saw its suburban decades – on the edge of London – from the late 18th century, and some fine Georgian terraces remain. Early residents included artists such as Benjamin Haydon and Charles Rossi, whose former cottage still stands at 116 Lisson Grove. Lord's Cricket Ground adjoined Lisson Grove in the early nineteenth century before re-locating to St Johns Wood, the similar-size district to the north. The area is bounded by St John's Wood Road to the north, Regent's Park to the east, Edgware Road to the west and Marylebone Road to the south.
Church Street electoral ward, as currently drawn, is approximately the same. Lisson Grove is predominantly residential, with a mid-to-high population density for Inner London. The council's profile describes Church Street as an ethnically diverse ward, having one of the highest concentrations of social housing in the borough with a substantial estate renewal programme underway.
History
For the etymology behind the district's street names see Street names of Lisson Grove
Manor of Lileston
Lisson Grove, occasionally referred to as Lissom Grove, takes its name from the manor (estate) of Lileston, which was included in the Domesday Book in 1086. Domesday recorded the presence of 8 households within the manor, suggesting a population of around forty. The manor stretched as far as the boundary with Hampstead.
From the 12th century onwards, the Manor of Lileston and the neighbouring Manor of Tyburn) were served by the Parish of St Marylebone, an area which had consistent boundaries until the parish's successor, the Metropolitan Borough of St Marylebone merged with neighbouring areas to form the City of Westminster in 1965.
The Manor of Lileston subdivided with the Manor of Lisson green becoming an independent landholding.
The edges of Lisson Grove are defined by the two current Edgware Road stations facing onto Edgware Road or Watling Street as it was previously known, one of the main Roman thoroughfares in and out of London. The road is also the western boundary of the wider Marylebone district.
Early Development
Until the late 18th century the district remained essentially rural. Much of Lisson Grove had become a slum in Victorian London, notorious for drinking, crime and prostitution particularly in its pockets of extreme poverty with archetypal squalor, overcrowding and dilapidation. The arrival of the Regent's Canal in 1810 and the railway at Marylebone in 1899 led to rapid urbanisation of Lisson Grove.
Post-WWI Development
After World War I, the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, announced a policy of "Homes Fit for Heroes", leading to a sponsored housing boom from which Lisson Grove benefitted. In 1924, St Marylebone Borough Council completed the Fisherton Street Estate of seven apartment blocks in red-brick neo-Georgian style with high mansard roofs grouped around two courtyards. Noted for their innovation as some of the first social housing to include an indoor bathroom and toilet, since 1990 this has been a conservation area The blocks were named mostly for the notable former residents of Lisson Grove and its surrounding areas, which drew Victorian landscape painters, sculptors, portraitists and architects: