Homer Street

[1] According to Gillian Bebbington, these names were inspired by Edward Homer who was a friend of John Simon Harcourt, owner of the land on which the streets were built.

[3] On Charles Booth's 1898-99 poverty classification map of London,[4] the street is shown in purple meaning ‘mixed, some comfortable others poor’.

[8] Halfway along on the west side at number 8 is Octavia House, an unassuming modern building, which was completed as a retirement home for nurses in 1975.

Enid Elliott Linder lived at 67 Crawford Buildings from January 1933 to March 1939 and recalled the poverty and wealth of 1930s Marylebone in her memoir, We Learnt about Hitler at the Mickey Mouse Club, which was published posthumously in 2021.

[17] Elliot Linder recalled Freshwater Place of the 1930s: 'When [my sister] Joan and I wandered in through that deep archway for the first time, we found ourselves facing a broad rectangle of shaggy grass, like a village green.

The Beehive narrowly escaped demolition linked to St Marylebone Council's slum clearance programme in 1956, when the Freshwater Place/Homer Row scheme was cut back to exclude properties fronting Homer Street.

[21] The Olive Branch's 1988 reincarnation as The Quintin Hogg earned a wry put-down from Alan Coren in The Times Diary: 'Where will it end?

'[22] Typically for the urban village it's part of, Homer Street is home to long-term residents and young professionals alike.