CHAPTER IV
Knightsbridge Green Area
Redevelopment after the Second World War robbed the
Knightsbridge Green area of much of its character, substituting soulless large commercial buildings for what had
been a varied mixture of mostly Victorian development
(figs 22, 27). Two features remain essentially intact: the
narrow passageway of Knightsbridge Green, and the
enormous bulk of Park Mansions at Scotch Corner – the
junction of Knightsbridge and Brompton Road. But
Knightsbridge west of Park Mansions has lost its 'high
street' bustle, and the seedy lodging-house quarter of
Raphael Street, obscurely placed behind the main-road
shops, restaurants, hotels and mansion flats of pre-war
days, has been entirely destroyed. Also vanished is Tattersalls' horse-mart, one of Knightsbridge's most celebrated
institutions and, with its classical-style gateway, a distinctive architectural presence on the Green.
The oldest building hereabouts is the former All Saints'
School of 1875, on the north side of the Green.
Landownership before development
Early development in this area was concentrated along the
main Kensington road (known here as the High Road) and
at Knightsbridge Green itself. However, a rather fragmented landownership (fig. 21) did not encourage a very
orderly or ambitious pattern of building. In the early eighteenth century Philip Moreau acquired the greater part of
the land around the Green (and more extensive ground
further west), but portions remained in other hands, and in
any case Moreau's estate was broken up in 1759. By that
time much of the area was becoming fairly densely built
over, with rows of small houses filling up gaps in the
frontages to the roads and the Green. However, it was not
until the construction of Raphael Street from 1844 that it
began to take on a distinctly urban character. Successive
redevelopments have entirely transformed the scale of
building since then, and few of the old property boundaries
are still apparent today.
The most important line to survive is along the west side
of the present-day Knightsbridge Green, dividing the historical Green – the triangle of manorial land between the
two main roads, belonging formerly to Westminster Abbey
– from the variously owned land to the west.
These various landholdings included a piece of ground
belonging from 1719 to the Trevor family, from whose
larger estate further west it was separated by a narrow
strip. (ref. 1) The development of this ground (latterly occupied
by Albert Gate Mansions and Prince's Club, its boundaries
now obliterated by redevelopment) was tied up with that of
the High Road generally and its history is therefore given
here rather than in the chapter describing the main Trevor
estate.
Philip Moreau (1656–1733) belonged to a wealthy
Huguenot merchant family from Picardy, and was at the
centre of a small enclave of French émigrés settled in
Knightsbridge in the early eighteenth century. Among
them was the surgeon and anatomist Paul Buissière (or
Bussière), who lived for more than twenty years until his
death in 1739 in a house north of the Moreaus' own residence on the west side of Knightsbridge Green. A
favourite of the royal family, Buissière attended Queen
Caroline during her last illness. His house was later owned
by another émigré, John Larpent the elder, chief clerk in the
Foreign Office. (ref. 2)
The Moreau estate originated as the Knightsbridge portions of a hundred-acre landholding, mostly in Kensington
and Chelsea, belonging to Sir William Blake but dispersed
after his death in 1630. (ref. 3) Moreau first acquired, in 1705, a
mansion house which had been part of Blake's property.
This stood just to the west of the Green at its southern end.
In 1718 he obtained the rest of the former Blake ground in
Knightsbridge: a large area along the north side of the
Brompton road, extending northwards to include the Rose
and Crown inn fronting the High Road, and the future site
of Montpelier Square, together with a detached piece of
land now covered by parts of Princes Gate and Ennismore
Gardens. (ref. 4)
Over the next few years Moreau completed his local
acquisitions by obtaining the tenure of most of the manorial land belonging to Westminster Abbey at the junction of
the Kensington and Brompton roads, including an inn,
then called the Sun, forerunner of the present-day Paxton's Head. Middle Row (North), a terrace fronting the
Kensington road, was built there shortly afterwards. (ref. 5)
In 1744 Philip Moreau's son and heir, Captain James
Philip Moreau, negotiated an agreement with the neighbouring landowner Arthur Trevor, guaranteeing the
maintenance of a driftway (eventually to become Lancelot
Place) for the use of Moreau's tenants between the Brompton road and the Rose and Crown. From Captain Moreau,
who rebuilt the family house at the Green, the estate
eventually descended to Charles Frederick Moreau, his
grandson, who put it up for auction in several lots in 1759. (ref. 6)
The site of the Moreaus' house and garden, latterly
occupied by Tattersalls' horse and carriage mart, retained
its separate identity until redevelopment in the 1950s. Dr
Buissière's old house, eventually to become the Pakenham
Tavern, and the more extensive Rose and Crown property,
each passed into separate ownership at the sale, but were
eventually brought back together as part of the estate of the
gunmaker Durs Egg. The ground south of the Moreaus'
house (or Grosvenor House, as it became), fronting the
Brompton road, was mostly built up in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries (Plate 5c).
Figure 21:
Landownership in central Knightsbridge in the first half of the eighteenth century
Middle Row and the Sun inn property also passed into
separate ownerships at the sale, but were later reunited and
ultimately redeveloped as Park Mansions.
The remaining portion of Moreau land near the Green
was the World's End or Fulham Bridge inn, fronting the
Brompton road on the plot between the Moreaus' garden
and the driftway. The inn itself was subsequently rebuilt,
and houses and shops erected along the Brompton road
frontage. The northern part of this deep plot was developed after the Moreau sale as a mews (Fulham Bridge Yard,
later Tullett Place) with a ride for exercising and showing
horses. In the 1830s houses were built on the east side, but
extensive stabling remained. (ref. 8) The mews and houses were
largely redeveloped with garaging before the Second
World War. This site also lost its separate identity as a
result of post-war redevelopment.
Besides the land belonging to the Moreaus and Westminster Abbey, there was one more estate in immediate
proximity to the Green in the eighteenth century. This
consisted of an irregularly shaped plot fronting the Kensington road (E on fig. 21), extending from the west side of
the Green to the boundaries of the Rose and Crown property and the gardens of Dr Buissière and the Moreaus. On
it stood a house of 1688 and various small houses and outbuildings. By 1704 the ground belonged to Martin Cawfield Basil, a Lincoln's Inn barrister with estates in Ireland
and Buckinghamshire, after whose death in 1735 it was
partly redeveloped. (ref. 9) Basil's estate was later acquired by
Durs Egg.
Durs Egg's estate, through which Raphael Street was
ultimately to be carved, was assembled by him in
1799–1803 and amounted to about four acres. As well as
Basil's old property, it consisted of the Rose and Crown and
its grounds extending to the driftway, and Dr Buissière's
house, where Egg lived until his death. (ref. 10)
A German-Swiss by birth, Durs Egg was one of the
finest gunsmiths in England, patronized by the royal family. But his latter years were clouded by mental illness, litigation and family strife. He took against his children, and
towards the end of his life carried loaded pistols, believing
'all those that approached him had designs upon his life'.
When he died in 1831, at the age of 82, he left a will which
would have largely disinherited his family. This was successfully contested on the grounds of his insanity, but the
Knightsbridge Green estate, encumbered by a £5,000
mortgage, was not disposed of for several years. A purchase
agreement with William Nokes of Denton Court, Kent,
made in 1833, ultimately fell through, apparently because
of remaining uncertainty over the title to the property.
Egg's estate was eventually sold in 1838 to Lewis Raphael
of Hendon, who initiated its partial redevelopment. (ref. 11)