Marquis de MayfairThe Erotic Map of Britain
The Map→Royal Liaison→Nell Gwyn's house, 79 Pall Mall

Royal Liaison · London, Greater London

Nell Gwyn's house, 79 Pall Mall

The house Charles II gave his best-loved mistress — the orange-seller turned actress Nell Gwyn — and the only freehold on the south side of Pall Mall not owned by the Crown, because Nell reputedly refused to live in a house she did not own. John Evelyn's diary records the King chatting to 'Mrs Nelly' over her garden wall in 1671.

StatusDocumented history
Datefreehold granted 1676; Nell lived here until 1687
The peopleNell Gwyn, Charles II, John Evelyn
The site79 Pall Mall, St James's
Coordinates51.50600, -0.13560 (confidence 4/5)

The story

The building here isn't hers. This Italianate block went up in 1866–68 for the Eagle Insurance Company; Nell Gwyn had been dead nearly two centuries. But her house stood on this ground, and the ground carries a genuine oddity.

Born around 1650 into poverty, Nell sold oranges at the King's Theatre before becoming the finest comic actress of the age — "pretty, witty Nell" to Samuel Pepys — and then Charles II's mistress and mother of a duke. In 1671 the King put her in a house here. She wasn't satisfied with a mere lease. Tradition, preserved by the Survey of London, has her insisting "she had always conveyed free under the Crown, and always would," refusing the house until she was granted the freehold by Act of Parliament. In 1676 she won — and this became the only plot on the south side of Pall Mall not owned by the Crown, as it remains.

The famous "Protestant whore" retort — flung at a mob who mistook her for a Catholic rival — is a later, much-repeated anecdote rather than documented fact, but it fits her exactly. She died in 1687 and lies at St Martin-in-the-Fields.

More stories at this spot

Overheard by a disapproving diarist

On 2 March 1671, John Evelyn walked through St James's Park with the King and was appalled to catch "a very familiar discourse" between Charles and Nell — she leaning over her garden wall, he on the path below. Evelyn wrote that he was "heartily sorry" to witness it. Three and a half centuries later, his disapproval is the reason we have the scene at all.

Sources

Nearby on the map

Notable 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 spotModern NotorietyMurray's Cabaret Club (where Profumo met Keeler's world)London, Greater London · England

The Soho supper club where showgirls in feathers were forbidden to move — and where the teenage Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies met Stephen Ward, the introduction that set the Profumo affair in motion. Discretion was the house rule; history had other plans.

Documented historyNotable 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 history

Spotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.