‘Mews’ as a name for a particular type of London street got its name in a rather roundabout way.  In the Middle Ages to ‘mew’ meant to moult or shed feathers and the cage where a hawk might be put in its moulting season was sometimes called a ‘mew’.

Henry VIII kept his hawks in Charing Cross, roughly where the National Portrait Gallery stands today. Although he replaced the mews with stables for his horses, it kept its name of ‘The Mews’. From then on, ‘mews’ – a plural word, now frequently used in the singular - became the name for any small street or yard in Georgian or Victorian London designed for stabling horses and carriages.