History
Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today (from 1686 until it was banned in that location in 1764). Until 1686, the May Fair was held in Haymarket, and after 1764, it moved to Fair Field in Bow because the well-to-do residents of the area felt the fair lowered the tone of the neighbourhood.
The oldest cottage in Mayfair was believed to date from 1618. It was destroyed in the Blitz in late 1940. A plaque in Stanhope Row, near Shepherd Market, marks its former site.
Mayfair was anciently part of the parish of St Martin in the Fields, and became part of St George Hanover Square in 1724. The new parish stretched to Bond Street in the southern part of Mayfair and almost to Regent Street north of Conduit Street. The northern boundary was Oxford Street and the southern boundary fell short of Piccadilly. The parish continued west of Mayfair into Hyde Park and then south to include Belgravia and other areas.
The old telephone district of MAYfair (later 629) changed east of Bond Street to REGent (later 734). Most of the area was first developed between the mid 17th century and the mid 18th century as a fashionable residential district, by a number of landlords, the most important of them being the Dukes of Westminster, the Grosvenor family. The Grosvenor family has owned 40 hectares (100 acres) of Mayfair since 1677, when Sir Thomas Grosvenor married Mary Davies, heiress to part of the Manor of Ebury. The Rothschild family bought up large areas of Mayfair in the 19th century. The freehold of a large section of Mayfair also belongs to the Crown Estate.
The district is now mainly commercial, with many offices in converted houses and new buildings, including major corporate headquarters, a concentration of hedge funds, real estate businesses and many different embassy offices, namely the U.S.'s large office taking up all the west side of Grosvenor Square. Rents are among the highest in London and the world. There remains a substantial quantity of residential property as well as some exclusive shopping and London's largest concentration of luxury hotels and many restaurants. Buildings in Mayfair include both the Canadian High Commission and the United States embassy in Grosvenor Square, the Royal Academy of Arts, The Handel House Museum, the Grosvenor House Hotel, Claridge's and The Dorchester.
The renown and prestige of Mayfair could have grown in the popular mind because it is the most expensive property on the British Monopoly set.
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