The Mayfair Chapel—also widely known as Keith’s Chapel or the Curzon Street Chapel—was an 18th-century episcopal chapel on Curzon Street in Mayfair, Middlesex (now central London). Built around 1730, it gained notoriety under the Reverend Alexander Keith for hosting thousands of swift, clandestine marriages without banns or licenses until the practice was ended by Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1754.
History and Clandestine Marriages
Location: Situated on the south side of Curzon Street near Shepherd’s Market within the parish of St George Hanover Square.
Dr. Keith’s “Marriage Shop”: Reverend Alexander Keith aggressively advertised cheap, fast weddings (costing roughly one guinea inclusive of fees and certificates), performing up to 6,000 ceremonies a year.
Notable Marriages: Despite being irregular, high-society figures—including the Duke of Hamilton and Elizabeth Gunning—were married at the chapel.
Demise: Keith was eventually imprisoned for defying ecclesiastical authority, though his curates kept the chapel operating until the 1754 Act outlawed clandestine unions. The building was later demolished in the early 1900s.
(Note: If you are looking for a surviving historic chapel in the immediate area built during that exact same decade, you may be thinking of the Grosvenor Chapel on South Audley Street, which was founded in 1730 and remains active today).