Editing Pimlico (section)

===Early history and origin of name===
[[Image:Greenwood 1827 cropped.jpg|thumb|left|Greenwood's 1827 map showing parts of Pimlico and [[Millbank, London|Millbank]] prior to development]]
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Manor of Ebury was divided up and leased by the Crown to servants or favourites. In 1623, [[James VI and I|James I]] sold the freehold of Ebury for £1,151 and 15 shillings.{{efn|£1,151.75, about £{{Inflation|UK|1151.75|1623|2021|r=-3|fmt=c}} in 2021, indexed by retail price inflation. Property price inflation has been considerably greater.}} The land was sold on several more times, until it came into the hands of heiress Mary Davies in 1666.

Mary's dowry not only included "The Five Fields" of modern-day Pimlico and [[Belgravia]], but also most of what is now [[Mayfair]] and [[Knightsbridge]]. Understandably, she was much pursued but in 1677, at the age of twelve, married [[Sir Thomas Grosvenor, 3rd Baronet]]. The Grosvenors were a family of [[Normans|Norman]] descent long seated at Eaton Hall in Cheshire who, until this auspicious marriage, were of but local consequence in their native county of [[Cheshire]]. Through the development and good management of this land the Grosvenors acquired enormous wealth.

At some point in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, the area ceased to be known as Ebury or "The Five Fields" and gained the name by which it is now known. While its origins are disputed, it is "clearly of foreign derivation.... [[William Gifford|[William] Gifford]], in a note in his edition of [[Ben Jonson]], tells us that 'Pimlico is sometimes spoken of as a person, and may not improbably have been the master of a house once famous for ale of a particular description'."<ref>[http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45221 'Pimlico', Old and New London] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140903035545/http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45221 |date=3 September 2014 }}: Volume 5 (1878), pp. 39–49.</ref> Supporting this etymology, [[E. Cobham Brewer]] describes the area as "a district of public gardens much frequented on holidays. According to tradition, it received its name from Ben Pimlico, famous for his nut-brown ale. His tea-gardens, however, were near [[Hoxton]], and the road to them was termed Pimlico Path, so that what is now called Pimlico was so named from the popularity of the Hoxton resort".<ref>Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, [http://www.bartleby.com/81/13282.html/ ''Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150908010928/http://www.bartleby.com/81/13282.html |date=8 September 2015 }}, 1898 edn.</ref>

[[H. G. Wells]], in his novel ''[[The Dream (novel)|The Dream]]'', says that there was a wharf at Pimlico where ships from America docked and that the word Pimlico came with the trade and was the last word left alive of the Algonquin Indian language ([[Carolina Algonquian language|Pamlico]]).