Why a Villa Suburb Needed Back Lanes
Almost all of what is now the Primrose Hill Conservation Area was laid out on land belonging to Lord Southampton, sold off in freehold portions in 1840. The sale map showed a grand estate of large detached and semi-detached villas standing in generous gardens, and the wide, gently curving roads of that scheme survive today. What was actually built between the 1840s and about 1870 was denser and plainer than the plan promised, but the block structure it created is precisely what produced the mews.
Camden's conservation area statement describes these narrow roads as having originally provided servicing to the rear gardens of the villas. They are reached from the principal roads through gaps between buildings and garden walls, and their irregular shapes follow the pattern of land ownership within each block rather than any tidy geometry. As development intensified in the later phases, the long villa gardens were exchanged for small gardens backing onto stables and industrial units, and further streets and mews buildings were pushed into the planned layout.
Albert Terrace Mews, Regal Lane and the Others
In the southern part of the conservation area, between Regent's Park Road and the park, Camden names Albert Terrace Mews, Kingstown Road and Regal Lane as the mews that contrast with the wide roads and villas around them. Regal Lane was originally called Queen's Mews. Albert Terrace Mews runs off Regent's Park Road as a through route with a part-cobbled surface and sixteen residential properties; its two-storey fronts are rendered and painted brickwork, and some original stable doors and bressumers survive.
North of Regent's Park Road the pattern repeats at smaller scale. The secondary roads there enclose relatively small, irregularly shaped blocks with central mews developments, similar in character to those in the central area. St George's Mews and Erskine Mews are among them, the latter reached through an archway from Erskine Road.
Hay Lofts, Piano Works and Artists' Studios
The mews were only part of a larger hidden layer. Camden records that the centres of the blocks, and the strip beside the railway, were occupied by buildings of mixed use — industry, offices, artists' studios and housing — clustered around small enclosed courtyards reached by narrow alleyways, some of them placed discreetly between terraced houses and some running through gated archways. Because they sit behind the street frontages, they occupy a great deal of land while remaining almost invisible.
Much of that concealed activity was manufacturing. Alongside Camden Town and Kentish Town, the Primrose Hill area became a centre for piano making; Camden's statement names J. Spencer and Co. at the end of Egbert Street, John and James Hopkinson in Fitzroy Road, and Collard and Collard on the corner of Gloucester Crescent and Oval Road. The former piano factory at that corner dates from 1852 and is circular in form. In 1877 a group of twelve artists' studios, the Primrose Hill Studios, was erected by Alfred Healey in the centre of the block behind Fitzroy Road; among those who worked there were the illustrator Arthur Rackham and the conductor Henry Wood. Railway workers' cottages stood on Manley Street and at Auden Place, the latter redeveloped as housing in 1970.
From Moulting Hawks to Motor Cars
The word itself has nothing to do with horses. It comes from the Royal Mews, the royal stables built on what is now Trafalgar Square, where the King's falcons were kept to moult — to 'mew', from the French muer. The name transferred to the stable yards that served grand houses. The standard arrangement put stables and a coach house on the ground floor, with a hayloft and a room or two above for the coachman and the ostlers.
By the early twentieth century the motor car and the shortage of domestic servants had made that arrangement redundant. Taxi firms, garages and small businesses took over many of the buildings, and residential conversion followed later in the century. In Primrose Hill the process began earlier and never stopped: Camden notes that sporadic redevelopment of the mews started late in the nineteenth century and has continued to the present day, taking in a wide range of architectural styles.
Cobbles, Parapets and an Article 4 Direction
What gives a surviving Primrose Hill mews its character is a short list of things. The buildings are generally two storeys, with flat fronts sitting directly on or close to the highway and strong parapet lines. The surfaces matter as much as the buildings: York stone paving, small setts to the carriageway, and granite sett side and central gutters, with small pockets of planting. The backs of the villas, their rear gardens and their boundary walls form the other side of the street, creating a high degree of enclosure broken by occasional openness and greenery. Camden lists views into Albert Terrace Mews and Regal Lane from Regent's Park Road among the significant views of the area.
The conservation area was designated on 1 October 1971 and extended on 18 June 1985 to take in the northern part of Erskine Road. On 3 March 1983 an Article 4 Direction withdrew permitted development rights relating to single-family dwelling houses and minor operations, which is why changes that would be automatic elsewhere require consent here. Not every mews survived the century: Eglon Mews, off Berkley Road, sits within the conservation area but no longer contains any original mews buildings at all.