Restaurant Tapas Bar Shepherd Market
Mayfair has long been associated with wealth and luxury, but it wasn’t always that way. The original May Fair was held at Great Brookfield – now part of Curzon Street and Shepherd Market – on boggy land around the Tyburn brook from 1686 to 1764, and it was a decidedly “lewd and disorderly” affair.
It featured “musick, showes, drinking, gaming, raffling, lotteries, stageplays and drolls (comic turns)”. It was also hugely popular and attracted “all the nobility of the town”. And it carried on despite the apparent disapproval of Queen Anne.
The May Fair kept on growing until it covered quite an area including Shepherd’s Market, Shepherd’s Court, White Horse Street, Sun Court, Market Court and on the open space westwards as far as what is now Park Lane.
Fair and foul
It featured booths for jugglers and prize fighters and bear and bull baiting and it continued for 78 years, until it was finally brought to an end by residents of new developments nearby who objected to the noise – an early case of nimbyism.
The organisers simply moved the May Fair to Bow. All that remains now of the original May Fair is a blue plaque on the side of a building in Trebeck Street, Shepherd Market. You can take it in on your way to El Pirata, the much more salubrious best tapas bars in London, on the edge of Shepherd Market in Down Street.
