New Bond Street

Bond Street, particularly New Bond Street, was considered to be the most fashionable shopping street in London from the eighteenth century right through the Regency. But all those rooms on the floors above the shops were not just relegated to the dwellings of the shop-keepers. Bond Street was a fashionable residential address and many shop-keepers let some or all of their upper rooms to distinguished lodgers, including Dean Jonathan Swift, George Selwyn, Edward Gibbon, William Pitt the Elder, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Sir Joshua Reynolds and James Boswell, most of whom lived in Old Bond Street. Some of those who took rooms in New Bond Street include Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Walter Scott, Admiral Lord Nelson, and later, in a different house, Lady Emma Hamilton.

Bond Street was certainly the most fashionable shopping area of Regency London. The best dress-makers and tailors, jewellers and boot-makers, tobacconists and haberdashers all had well-appointed shops along that street. However, the overtly masculine atmosphere which prevailed along that street meant that young ladies, certainly gently-bred, unmarried ladies, must always be accompanied by a chaperon and must not be seen in public along that street anytime after mid-day. But keep in mind that mid-day in the Regency did not mean high noon, as we would assume today. Rather, young ladies would be expected to make themselves scarce by four or five o’clock in the afternoon. At that time, they should be strolling or driving through Hyde Park, or on their way home to change for dinner and their evening activities. They should most definitely not be seen strolling along Bond Street for any reason as the dinner hour approached. Mornings (in the Regency, the time between arising and dinner) on Bond Street belonged to the ladies. The remainder of the day on Bond Street belonged to the gentlemen.regencyredingote

One of the most up-market fabric shops were Wilding & Kent at Grafton house on the corner of New Bond Street and Grafton Street. On 17 April 1811 Jane and Manon, Eliza Austen’s maidservant,

‘…took our walk to Grafton House, & I have a good deal to say on that subject. I am sorry to tell you that I am getting very extravagant & spending all my Money; & what is worse for you, I have been spending yours too…’

she told Cassandra. It was a very busy shop and in November 1815 Jane complains of ‘the miseries’ of shopping there and most of her references to it mention an early start and long waits to be served – not that this stopped her going there frequently. janeaustenslondon/london-history

The streets were full of enormous coaches, sometimes gilt, hung on high springs, drawn by four, and even six horses; footmen, to the number of four or six, ran beside them, and the wheels splashed heavily in the dirt described, sending up the mud in black spurts. It was early in the nineteenth century that a new kind of paving was tried, blocks of cast-iron covered with gravel, but this was not a success. Resides the large coaches there were hackney coaches, which would seem to us almost equally clumsy and unwieldy. Omnibuses were not seen in the metropolis until 1823.

Hackney coaches were in severe competition with sedan chairs, for to call a chair was as frequent a custom as to send for a hackney coach. The chairmen were notorious for their incivility, just as the watermen had previously been, and as their successors, the cabmen, became later, though now the reproach is removed from them. These chairs were kept privately by great people, and often were very richly decorated with brocade and plush; it was not an unusual thing for the footmen or chairmen of the owner to be decoyed into a tavern while the chair was stolen for the sake of its valuable furniture. The chairs opened with a lid at the top to enable the occupant to stand up on entrance, and then were shut down; in the caricatures of the day, these lids are represented as open to admit of the lady's enormous feather being left on her head.
janeaustensworld/sedan-chairs
mollands