Marylebone got its name from villagers trying to escape the gallows
For centuries the hamlet near today's Marble Arch was known for one thing: the Tyburn gallows, where public executions drew crowds. When a new church to St Mary went up by the local stream in 1400, the villagers seized the chance to rebrand. They began calling home St Mary by the bourne, which slowly became Marylebone.
The word bourne comes from the Anglo-Saxon burna, a small stream. The brook rose up in Hampstead and ran down the line of what is now Marylebone Lane, which still keeps its winding curve inside the neat street grid. In the 17th century, probably by analogy with names like Mary-le-Bow, a French-style le crept into the middle. Samuel Pepys spelled it Marrowbone in his diary. The popular story that it means Marie la Bonne, Mary the Good, has no support.
In 1086 the Domesday Book recorded two small manors here, Lilestone and Tyburn, with eight households each. Lilestone passed to the Knights Templar and then to the Knights of St John, who gave their name to St John's Wood. Henry VIII took the northern part of Tyburn in 1544 and fenced it as a deer park, the distant ancestor of Regent's Park. Later, marriages among aristocratic families carved the land into great estates, recalled in names such as Cavendish Square and Portland Place.
Those estates still shape the district. The Howard de Walden Estate manages most of 92 acres between Marylebone High Street and Portland Place, and the Portman Estate, bought in 1554, developed much of the west in the late 1700s. In the 18th century the area had a rowdier reputation, with bear-baiting and prize fights, including between women, in Marylebone Gardens and duels in the nearby fields.
Cricket put the name on the map worldwide. The Marylebone Cricket Club was founded in 1787, first playing at Dorset Fields, and moved in 1814 to Lord's, which it bills as the Home of Cricket. The old parish joined Westminster and Paddington in 1965 to form the modern City of Westminster.
Source: Marylebone
