London's Russian corner: why Bayswater has a Moscow Road and a St Petersburgh Place

One of our photos was taken in the quiet St Petersburgh Mews in Bayswater, London W2. Next to it run St Petersburgh Place and Moscow Road. For Russian-speaking London it is almost a home patch — and these names share one story.

Where the Russian names come from

The streets were named after the 1814 visit of the allied sovereigns to London. Following Napoleon's abdication in April 1814, Britain hosted the victors: Russia's Emperor Alexander I and Prussia's King Frederick William III arrived in the capital on 7 June and stayed until 22 June. The local developer, painter and publisher Edward Orme, marked the alliance with Russia in the street names: he laid out Moscow Road in 1814–15 and named the neighbouring street Petersburgh Place — later St Petersburgh Place, after Saint Petersburg, then the capital of the Russian Empire.

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What stands on these streets

St Petersburgh Place has two listed buildings today: the Anglican St Matthew's church and the New West End Synagogue. Moscow Road is home to the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sophia: it opened in 1879 and became a cathedral in 1922; in the 19th century the road was the centre of London's Greek community.

A name that outlived the renamings

A curious detail: Saint Petersburg itself changed its name twice in the 20th century — Petrograd (1914), Leningrad (1924) — and returned to its historic name in 1991. London's St Petersburgh Place and St Petersburgh Mews stayed exactly as they were throughout. In Paris the Rue de Saint-Pétersbourg was renamed; in London it was not.

So if you find yourself in Bayswater, look in on Moscow Road and St Petersburgh Place — a small but genuine Russian trace on the London map.