Bryanston Square


Bryanston Square is an by garden square in Marylebone, London. Terraced buildings surround it — often merged, converted or sub-divided, some of which remain residential. The southern end has the William Pitt Byrne memorial fountain. Next to both ends are cycle parking spaces.
The most notable merger is the Swiss Embassy at the north-east end. The square's narrow ends are broken by broad approach streets of the same British Regency date. More recent style flanks the mid-west range of the square in the form of №s 31, 32 and 33 which are three times an ordinary range of its widths, meaning the numbering scheme today skips ten following numbers, destroyed to make room for these, to culminate with №s 44 to 50 and the highest-numbered buildings of Great Cumberland Place - its corner houses, №s 63 and 68. That street, this square and Wyndham Place run broad and straight for 750 metres without building projections between an 1821-built church and Marble Arch, moved to its permanent site in 1851.
Traffic circulates clockwise around the square and numbering runs anti-clockwise.

Amenities and neighbours

Wyndham Place

Wyndham Place including front, railed space of its buildings forms a purposeful gap across which runs north from that end of the square to become a 190-foot-wide forecourt, with seated areas, to the Church of St Mary's - built in 1821 to designs by Robert Smirke. The church is Grade I listed. Its №s 3 to 6 and 9 to 16 are alike light-brown brick terraces with white, ashlar-style stucco to the lower floors, by Parkinson, and completed by 1823, they are Grade II listed.

Great Cumberland Place

This equally broad street with parking spaces flanking runs south. Mid-way it broadens into a green crescent, Wallenberg Place, the arc of which is fronted by five buildings including Western Marble Arch Synagogue. The thoroughfare culminates with, across an approach to Oxford Street, Marble Arch aligned just off-centre before which, flanking, are: Cumberland Court and the Cumberland Hotel which incorporates the tube station and walkway to Hyde Park. Its predominant use classes are homes and hotels.

Architectural context and features

The square, taken at its greatest, is the size of Portman Square. It has roads, broad pavements and a private tree-planted garden. Wetherby Preparatory School occupies part of the south west corner. Listed are:
The neat façades contrast with fluctuations in colour and height. Slightly varied ochre brickwork from building to building is accompanied in by differing mansard roofs, mostly of grey slate. A little facing red-brown brick is used. Decorative black balconies above the first level are accompanied by a white chamfered band course at the penultimate level before the mansard. At the divide of the mansards or parapet roofs with roof gardens is a longer such course forming a more pronounced white band course. All of the casements are tall white, multi-pane sash windows of uniform height and distribution. The first-listed above was finished in 1811 to designs by Joseph Parkinson. The doric and ionic orders are used but symmetry is stressed. №s 10 to 12 and 19 to 21 were rebuilt to match, due to war damage.
In the south is the William Pitt Byrne Memorial Fountain, erected in 1862, a Grade II listed monument under the statutory protection scheme, as is an ornamental water pump at the opposite end.

Ambassadorial presence

Named after its founder Henry William Portman's home village of Bryanston in Dorset, it was built as part of the family's estate between 1810 and 1815, along with Montagu Square beyond the nominally-associated eastern Mews.

Notable people

The Bryanston suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa, is named after the square.