Marquis de MayfairThe Erotic Map of Britain
The Map→Notable Landmarks

8 places

Notable Landmarks

Monuments of love, liberation and the history of pleasure itself.

Notable LandmarksMarquis de Mayfair — Original Launch BoutiqueLondon, Greater London · England

The launch of the Marquis de Mayfair brand, a boutique off Bond Street on Old Burlington Street, Mayfair.

Documented historyNotable LandmarksShaftesbury Memorial Fountain ('Eros')London, Greater London · England

London's classic lovers' meeting point — 'meet me under Eros' — though the statue is actually Anteros, the god of mature, requited love, chosen to commemorate the philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury (Gilbert called Eros/Cupid 'the frivolous tyrant').

Documented historyHot spotNotable LandmarksMên-an-TolMadron, Cornwall · England

Cornwall's famous fertility stone — crawl through the ring to conceive. The fertility/healing folklore is genuinely recorded, though the 'seven times at full moon' formula is largely a modern accretion.

Documented historyNotable LandmarksSt Winefride's WellHolywell, Flintshire · Wales

The 'Lourdes of Wales' — a holy well whose origin legend is a tale of thwarted lust; pilgrims still bathe in the star-shaped basin for healing and intercession.

Documented historyNotable LandmarksFirst Ann Summers ShopLondon, Greater London · England

The shop that began the mainstreaming of sex retail for British women — from a scandalous Marble Arch 'sex supermarket' to the party-plan empire.

Documented historyNotable LandmarksThe Mothers' Clinic for Constructive Birth ControlLondon, Greater London · England

A landmark of women's sexual liberation — though Stopes' motives were entangled with eugenics, a fact this entry states plainly rather than airbrushing.

Documented historyNotable LandmarksThe Gateways ClubLondon, Greater London · England

Behind a green door on Bramerton Street, generations of London lesbians found their first taste of an out life; now an English Heritage blue plaque site.

Documented historyHot spotNotable LandmarksPadstow 'Obby 'Oss May Day FestivalPadstow, Cornwall · England

Cornwall's riotous May Day rite where being caught under the 'Oss means a baby (or a husband) within the year. The 'ancient pagan fertility rite' story is a 20th-century folklorist invention (per Ronald Hutton), though the custom itself is genuinely old.

Documented history