A pictorial record of the buildings of Seth Smith, one of London's great master builders from the early 19th Century. The blog has been compiled by a great, great, great grandchild and will be built up over a period of months...
Who was Seth Smith?
Seth Smith, the son of a rector from Warminster in Wiltshire, was a property developer in London in the early 19th century. He was responsible for building large parts of the West End of London including Belgravia and Mayfair. Most of the Mayfair developments have since disappeared but the Belgravia buildings remain, a testament to the vision that Seth Smith, Thomas Cubitt and the Cundy brothers had for what was once a swampy, crime-infested city-fringe area. Smith lived at 33 Eaton Square, having built a substantial proportion of the square that he lived in. He was born December 15th, 1791, and died June 18th 1860. His wife, Elizabeth, who died in 1852, had 11 children.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Wilton Crescent, Belgravia. A beautiful crescent-shaped street layout around a central garden. The facades of the buildings were re-faced with stone circa 1903 in what was a very successful renovation of the buildings.
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