The western half of St Marylebone was, in Saxon times, the Manor of Lileston. The name had been corrupted into Lisson by 1723 when the area began to be built over.

The area never had the social cachet of its neighbours, and when the Great Central Railway was driven through it in 1899 it took a turn for the worse.

hen Professor Higgins meets Eliza Doolittle in Shaw’s Pygmalion, he detects from her accent that she comes from Lisson Grove, and asks why she left. She replies “It wasn’t fit for a pig to live in.”

As a final blow, the northern part was flattened in the blitz and rebuilt in concrete.

As a result, the area today has the largest concentration of local authority or ex-local authority housing in the Sandford domain. But Lisson Grove may be on the way up – some upscale gated developments have been built recently and low property prices combined with good communications to the West End and City have attracted investor interest.