Kingston House and the Kingston
House Estate
When its development began in the 1840s, the Kingston
House estate had existed as an entity for barely half a century. There were four main constituent parts, which are to
a large extent discernible in the present-day pattern of
streets and buildings. Just under a third of the ground was
freehold. The remainder, formerly part of the extensive
property of the Brompton nurseryman John Swinhoe, was
copyhold of the manor of Knightsbridge and Westbourne
Green, belonging to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster
Abbey. (ref. 1)
At the core of the estate were the three acres of copy hold
ground acquired in 1757 by Elizabeth Chudleigh for the
building of Kingston House, occupied today by Kingston
House North and its garden. The land adjoining to the
west, a four-acre copyhold field, now occupied by Nos
14–25 Princes Gate and their communal garden, was purchased by the 2nd Duke of Kingston in 1759. Two freehold
fields to the east of Kingston House, but separated from it
by a narrow strip of ground, were bought in the same year
by Elizabeth Chudleigh. Known as West Mead or Wett
Meads, and together containing 6½ acres, these fields had
hitherto formed the westernmost portion of the Moreau
family's property in the Knightsbridge area (see fig. 21
on page 78). (ref. 2) Today this ground comprises the main
north-south roadway of Ennismore Gardens, together
with the whole east side of that street, Nos 1–7 Princes
Gate and their communal garden, the site of the Russian
Orthodox cathedral, and Ennismore Mews.
When the Duke of Kingston died in 1773 all this property descended to his wife (as he believed), Elizabeth
Chudleigh, for her lifetime, and upon her death in 1788 to
his nephew Charles Meadows, who under the terms of his
uncle's will took the surname Pierrepont. (ref. 3)
The narrow strip of ground between Kingston House
and the two freehold fields to the east purchased in 1759
was connected at its southern end to another copy hold field
lying behind the house. In 1793 Charles Pierrepont took
this whole piece of land, about 7½ acres in extent, on long
lease, thus consolidating as well as greatly enlarging the
estate. These 7½ acres continued to be held on lease until
the 1860s, when the 3rd Earl of Listowel, the then owner of
the Kingston House estate, was admitted as copyholder
and secured the ground's enfranchisement from manorial
control. (ref. 4) On the ground today are Nos 1–35 Ennismore
Gardens, Ennismore Gardens Mews, Moncorvo Close and
the two blocks of Kingston House South; the slip itself is
occupied by Kingston House East and the houses comprising Bolney Gate.
Figure 64:
Princes Gate and Ennismore Gardens in the mid-1890s: the Kingston House Estate
In 1807–8 Pierrepont, by then 1st Earl Manvers, gave
the property to his second son, Henry Manvers Pierrepont, who in 1813 sold it for £20,000 to William Hare,
Baron Ennismore, later 1st Earl of Listowel (1751–1837). (ref. 5)
In 1855 the substantial portion of the estate built up with
houses and stables in the 1840s and early '50s was sold by
the 2nd Earl, but the greater part, including Kingston
House itself, remained in the possession of the Hare
family until shortly before the Second World War. (ref. 6)
With the death of the 4th Earl in 1931, the estate passed
not to his eldest son, the socialist 5th Earl, but on trust to a
younger son, John Hare, later Viscount Blakenham. (ref. 7) In
1935 an agreement was made with property developers for
the sale of Kingston House, together with the neighbouring houses to the east and south built in the 1870s and '80s.
Later the rump of the estate — the mid-Victorian houses at
Nos 1–35 Ennismore Gardens and Ennismore Gardens
Mews — passed into the possession of the Egerton family,
Earls of Ellesmere (now Dukes of Sutherland). In 1996 the
freehold of these large houses, now known as the Ennismore Gardens Estate, was acquired by the Wellcome
Trust. Most of the properties in the mews have been
enfranchised under the 1967 Leasehold Reform Act. (ref. 8)
Kingston House (demolished)
Of the string of aristocratic mansions built along the south
side of the Kensington road in the late seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, Kingston House was the only one not
to succumb to redevelopment in the nineteenth. A remarkable survival, it was well photographed before being pulled
down in 1937 (Plates 80, 81); but the records of its building
history appear largely to have been lost. (ref. 9)
Elizabeth Chudleigh (1720–88), for whom the house
was built in 1757–8 — probably at the expense of the Duke
of Kingston — was the daughter of a lieutenant-governor of
Chelsea Hospital. A maid of honour to the Princess of
Wales, she formed a series of relationships with high-ranking noblemen, and became somewhat notorious for flouting the conventions of polite society. Many years before her
involvement with the Duke of Kingston, she had secretly,
and ill-advisedly, married the Hon. Augustus Hervey, later
Earl of Bristol. It was eventually determined in court that
the marriage had never taken place; but evidence of its
validity was blatantly suppressed, with the eventual result
that, after the duke's death, the judgement was overturned
and Elizabeth Chudleigh was indicted and found guilty of
bigamy. (ref. 10)
Miss Chudleigh is listed as the ratepayer of Kingston
House from 1758 until 1769, the year she and the duke
married, and they lived there together thereafter, until
his death in 1773. Following her trial in 1776, Elizabeth
Chudleigh (correctly the Countess of Bristol) fled abroad
to escape legal proceedings brought by the duke's family to
recover his property. However, the duke's will, leaving his
real estate to her for life, was upheld by the courts and she
continued to enjoy the profits until she died in France more
than ten years later. (ref. 11)
From Elizabeth Chudleigh, Kingston House descended
to the duke's nephew, and it remained in his family's possession until the estate was sold in 1813. For some of this
time the house was occupied by tenants. Sir George Warren lived there from 1789 to 1803, and in December 1790
was reported to be making 'considerable', though unspecified, alterations. (He also contrived to have a private carriage-entrance into Hyde Park built immediately opposite,
which apparently remained in use until the opening of
Prince of Wales Gate in 1848; a pedestrian gate now occupies the site.) (ref. 12) The 6th Earl of Stair is said to have lived at
Kingston House after Warren, though he is not listed in the
ratebooks, and between 1805 and 1808 the rates were paid
by Edward Lovedon Lovedon. Lord Ennismore took up
residence in the house after purchasing the estate in 1813,
and made 'many alterations and additions'. (ref. 13)
In its original form, Kingston House was a conventional Palladian villa, comprising a squarish three-storey block
flanked by lower wings containing stables and kitchens
(Plate 80a). (fn. a)
Architectural display was concentrated on the
north front, where the central bay was embellished with
two Venetian windows under a shallow pediment. Between
the house and the service wings were two small courtyards,
enclosed on the south side by single-storey linking corridors, and on the north by walls with pedimented gateways.
Though the architect is not known, a possible candidate is
Henry Flitcroft, who undertook commissions for both the
1st and 2nd Dukes of Kingston. (ref. 15)
Behind the house were originally formal gardens and a
grotto. (ref. 16)
An impression of Kingston House (or Chudleigh House
as it was then called) was recorded by a visitor in 1762:
[Miss Chudleigh's] house can justly be called a gem; it contains a
quantity of handsome and costly furniture and other curiosities
and objects of value, chosen and arranged with the greatest taste,
so that you cannot fail to admire it greatly. There is hardly a place
in the whole house left bare or without decoration, like a doll's
house. Everything is in perfect harmony. The view, over Hyde
Park, and at the back over Chelsea, is considered with truth one
of the finest that could be pictured. (ref. 17)
Parts of the mid-Georgian interior décor, including the
staircase, survived until the house was pulled down (Plate
81a). The photographs taken in 1937 show a lobby on the
second floor decorated in the Chinese taste.
Some Regency-style additions in the form of a colonnaded porte-cochère, bow windows at the front and a fullwidth Trafalgar balcony at the back (Plate 80a, 80c) were
most likely part of Lord Ennismore's improvements. He is
known to have made two major additions at the back before
1820: a grand first-floor saloon, built over the west service
wing and linking corridor, and beyond it, at the same level,
a 75ft-long Gothick-style conservatory of cast iron and
glass (Plates 80b, 81b, 81d). (fn. 18) The saloon was opulently decorated in the style of Nash, with green scagliola columns,
red damask wall-hangings and coffered coving. Together
with the two existing drawing-rooms on the first floor, the
saloon and conservatory made up an interconnecting
sequence of apartments along the garden front. According
to H. G. Davis, the Knightsbridge historian, the conservatory originally contained a painted window by John Martin
of a garden scene. (ref. 19) This had disappeared by the 1930s, but
another painted window by Martin, 'Woman cloathed with
the Sun', inspired by a passage in the Book of Revelations,
survived in the ante-room or corridor on the north side of
the saloon.
The appearance of the interior was enhanced by fine
furniture and the Hare family's very considerable collection of Old Master paintings, which included works by
Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Holbein, Poussin, Murillo and
Velázquez. (ref. 20)
That Kingston House survived well into the twentieth
century is all the more remarkable in that neither the 2nd
Earl of Listowel nor, initially, the 3rd Earl seem to have had
any particular attachment to the place. After the death of
the 1st Earl in 1837, the house was let to the Duke of
Wellington's brother, Richard, Marquess Wellesley, who
died there in 1842. In 1864 the house attracted a purchase
offer — through the agency of C. J. Freake, the developer of
the adjoining ground to the west — from Baron Lionel de
Rothschild, who had been living there since about 1859.
Nothing came of this, but the 3rd Earl was actively pursuing the enfranchisement of the property at this time, presumably as a preliminary to a proposed redevelopment of
the ground, and there is evidence that the demolition of
Kingston House was in mind during the 1870s. (ref. 21)
Possibly the difficulties encountered by the developer of
the north side of Ennismore Gardens in the 1880s discouraged further development and so helped to stave off the
destruction of the old house. The 3rd Earl died at Kingston
House in 1924, and the last occupant was his widow, who
in turn died there in December 1936. In March 1937 the
contents were sold and that autumn the house itself was
demolished for the building of flats (see Kingston House
North below). (ref. 22)