Even looking at Grosvenor Square 100 years ago it was difficult to imagine it surrounded by meadow land as it was around 1706, when Colley Cibber wrote in his Apology of the "green fields of pasture, from where little or no sustenance could be drawn, unless it were that of a milk diet."
But a glance at the pages of Boyle's Court Guide nearly a century later (in 1795) endorses Malcolm's description of the Square as being "the very focus of feudal grandeur, elegance, and fashion."
In the 20th century, almost all of the houses were demolished and replaced with hotels, embassies and blocks of flats in a neo-Georgian style.
Today, access to the western side of the square where the U.S. Embassy resides is tightly restricted for security purposes.