Upbrook Mews is built on top of the former Westbourne River.
Bayswater in the 1600s was a small hamlet and consisted of a few houses with outbuildings and stables. At its eastern edge, near the watering place, was an inn called The Crown - currently the Royal Lancaster Gate Hotel. Another inn was recorded nearby in 1730, called the Saracen’s Head and now known as The Swan.
In 1710, Robert Pollard was the owner of the old buildings of Bayard’s Watering Place and 6 acres of land in what had once been common fields of Westbourne Green. He sold them to Thomas Upton and his wife Jane in 1725, and they started a farm. The Upton Farm fields, at the heart of Bayswater, stretched approximately from the current Queensway in the west to Craven Terrace in the east, and from the current Bayswater Road in the south to Bishop’s Road (now called Bishop’s Bridge Road) in the north. The Upton Farm buildings were set back from the highway at the end of a tree-lined lane. The farmland was let to a number of farmers in narrow rectangular strips.
The current Queensway was then a narrow lane, and the main thoroughfare to Westbourne Green further north. In about 1751 the inn on its corner with the Uxbridge Road, originally called the Oxford Arms, was renamed the Black Lion Inn, and the lane became known as Black Lion Lane. The Black Lion pub still exists.
The Westbourne stream ran north from Bayard’s Watering Place with a small lane on its west bank - Elm Lane.
During the 1840s, building pressure on the Upton Farm lands became overwhelming, with the Westbourne stream and its flood plain being an impediment to development causing it to be culverted and sent underground during that decade.
A series of new streets was built over the river valley - Garden Mews, Brook Mews North and Brook Mews South.
Garden Mews in due course became Upbrook Mews. The original purpose of the Mews was to provide stable/ coach house accommodation to the main houses on Gloucester Terrace and Devonshire Terrace.
Upbrook Mews is a cobbled through road, approached through an entrance under a building on Chilworth Street in Westminster. There are 34 properties in the Mews, used for residential purposes. The Mews runs directly in line with Gloucester Mews West, a redeveloped Mews street
