Early residents included artists such as Benjamin Haydon and Charles Rossi , whose former cottage still stands at Lisson Grove. Church Street electoral ward , as currently drawn, is approximately the same. Lisson Grove is predominantly residential, with a mid-to-high population density for Inner London. The council's profile describes Church Street as an ethnically diverse ward, having one of the highest concentrations of social housing in the borough with a substantial estate renewal programme underway.
For the etymology behind the district's street names see Street names of Lisson Grove. Lisson Grove, occasionally referred to as Lissom Grove, takes its name from the manor estate of Lileston, which was included in the Domesday Book in Domesday recorded the presence of 8 households within the manor, [6] suggesting a population of around forty.
The manor stretched as far as the boundary with Hampstead. From the 12th century onwards, [7] the Manor of Lileston and the neighbouring Manor of Tyburn were served by the Parish of St Marylebone , [8] an area which had consistent boundaries until the parish's successor, the Metropolitan Borough of St Marylebone merged with neighbouring areas to form the City of Westminster in The Manor of Lileston subdivided c.
The edges of Lisson Grove are defined by the two current Edgware Road stations facing onto Edgware Road or Watling Street as it was previously known, one of the main Roman thoroughfares in and out of London. The road is also the western boundary of the wider Marylebone district. Until the late 18th century the district remained essentially rural. Much of Lisson Grove had become a slum in Victorian London, notorious for drinking, crime and prostitution particularly in its pockets of extreme poverty with archetypal squalor, overcrowding and dilapidation.
In , St Marylebone Borough Council completed the Fisherton Street Estate of seven apartment blocks in red-brick neo-Georgian style with high mansard roofs grouped around two courtyards. Noted for their innovation as some of the first social housing to include an indoor bathroom and toilet, since this has been a conservation area [10] The blocks were named mostly for the notable former residents of Lisson Grove and its surrounding areas, which drew Victorian landscape painters, sculptors, portraitists and architects:.
