Luxury Chauffeur Service in Mayfair

Bounded by Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Park Lane, Mayfair alters its character every few hundred metres. Stately and residential around Grosvenor Square and Mount Street; village-scaled, faintly bohemian at Shepherd Market; on Bond Street, jewellery, art and tailoring. Most people we drive here are doing several of those in a single day: a morning appointment, a fitting, lunch, then dinner somewhere that keeps hours of its own. What links them all is a preference for arriving with no ceremony whatever.

Stopping on Park Lane is not permitted, since it runs as a red route, so the set-down goes to a side street: Upper Grosvenor Street, Culross Street, or the hotel forecourts themselves, wherever the doorman points. Berkeley Square works as a one-way circuit and is at its worst on the north-west corner. Behind Mount Street and Davies Street the mews are narrow, fine for a saloon and seldom right for a long-wheelbase MPV. All of Mayfair falls inside the congestion charge zone; your chauffeur handles that quietly, and it never lands on your desk.

Journeys within Mayfair tend to be short and packed close together. Auction rooms and galleries on New Bond Street and Cork Street keep viewing times rather than opening hours. Savile Row tailors see you by appointment, and a fitting almost never ends when it was meant to. Restaurants along Mount Street and Curzon Street fill early and empty very late indeed. Days built like that call for an hourly chauffeur: the car sits close by, the boot takes the shopping, and nobody is watching a clock.

From Mayfair the usual departure point is Heathrow, 45 to 75 minutes as a rule by way of Hyde Park Corner and the A4, although the Cromwell Road can add a great deal at the wrong hour. Gatwick comes to 60 to 100 minutes down the A23 and M23. London City is nearer than people imagine, generally 35 to 60 minutes going east through the City. Flying privately from Farnborough or Luton, we leave earlier and confirm the handling agent's gate before you step out of the house.