Place name
The name was chosen by the street’s developer, William Peter Griggs (November 1, 1849 – August 11, 1920), a builder of Bethnal Green, for its classy connotations in order to attract buyers. The same rationale was applied to nearby Kensington Gardens. In his book Commuters: The History of a British Way of Life, Simon Webb explains: “[They are] interesting for the light they shed upon the hopes and aspirations of what were described as the ‘smaller civil servant, the clerk, and the young professional man”. Mayfair Avenue was laid out on land formerly belonging to the Cranbrook Estate – at around 400 acres, one of the largest estates in the parish of Ilford, which Griggs bought in 1897. On the Ordnance Survey Map published in 1897, this area is still undeveloped, although the nearby Cranbrook Park, along with its boating lake, had been laid out also on land formerly part of the estate, the park opened to the public in 1899.
