The Alexander Estate
During the first half of the nineteenth century the Alexander
estate in South Kensington consisted of six separate plots of land having a
total area of some fifty-four acres. Only three of these six plots, containing
about twenty acres, are within the area described in this volume, and their
location is shown on fig. 1. The other parts of the estate, whose development
will be discussed in detail in a future volume, consisted of a plot of about
fourteen acres which included the sites of Alexander and Thurloe Squares,
another of about twenty acres on the west side of Gloucester Road, and a tiny
piece (less than a quarter of an acre) now within the site of Barker's store in
Kensington High Street. (ref. 71) The following
brief account, however, describes the descent of the ownership of the whole
estate.
Although the estate is here called after its
nineteenth-century owners, the Alexanders, it has been traditionally known as
the Thurloe estate, after the Puritan statesman John Thurloe. His association
with the estate is supposed to derive from a present of some land in Brompton
which he is said to have received from Cromwell himself. (ref. 72) However, no documentary proof that either Cromwell or
Thurloe ever owned land in this area has been found: on the contrary the
surviving evidence suggests that Thurloe could never have been the owner of
this estate. The tradition of his ownership no doubt developed because in the
eighteenth century some of his descendants acquired an interest in the property
through marriage.
During the early part of the seventeenth century most of the
lands which were later to make up the Alexander estate were owned by Sir
William Blake as part of the very extensive freehold and copyhold estate which
he had assembled around Hale House. (ref. 7)
After Sir William's death in 1630 this large holding was broken up by his son,
also William. He seems nevertheless to have retained some land, bequeathing it
to his own son, Christopher, who in 1664 owned about fifty acres of his
grandfather's former estate. (ref. 73)
Christopher Blake left the property to his sister, Maria Dorney and the heirs
of her first marriage, and eventually it descended to her grand-daughter, Anna
Maria Harris. (ref. 74) Like her grandmother,
Anna Maria Harris was married twice, her second husband, in 1713, being John
Thurloe Brace, a grandson of John Thurloe. His mother was Thurloe's daughter
Ann, who had been born in Kensington, at Sheffield House. (ref. 75) Under the terms of the marriage settlement John
Thurloe Brace gained a life interest in the property. (ref. 76)
The total area of Anna Maria's estate at the time of her
second marriage was about sixty-five acres. This included eleven acres in
Knightsbridge (most of it copyhold) which was alienated from the rest of the
estate before the end of the eighteenth century. (ref. 77) The remaining fifty-four acres was made up of the
fifty acres Anna Maria had inherited from her grandmother and four acres of
copyhold land on the west side of Gloucester Road. (ref. 78) Most of the copyhold parts of the property were
enfranchised before 1800, but a couple of tiny pieces remained in copyhold
tenure until the 1830's. (ref. 79)
Figure 2:
Abridged pedigree showing the relationship between the Blake,
Thurloe and Alexander families.
Anna Maria Brace outlived her second husband and on her death
in 1760 she left her Brompton estate to the only son of the marriage, Harris
Thurloe Brace, a captain in the first regiment of Dragoon Guards. (ref. 80) He never married and on his death in 1799
he bequeathed the Kensington estate to his godson, John Alexander junior, whose
mother, Margaret, was Anna Maria Brace's grand-daughter. His father, John
Alexander senior, was a Hertfordshire clergyman. (ref. 81)
John Alexander junior was a lawyer. At the time of his
godfather's death he was about thirtyseven years old and still a bachelor.
Within a few months of inheriting the estate, however, he married Mary-Anne
Browne of Weymouth. (ref. 82) He was then
living in Bedford Row, Holborn, which was also his professional address, but in
1808 he moved to Kensington, firstly to Upper Phillimore Place, on the north
side of the High Street, and then, in the following year, across the road to a
house in The Terrace, where he spent the rest of his life. (ref. 83) By 1817 his professional office was in
Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn. (ref. 84)
The estate which he had inherited was primarily an
agricultural one and most of it was let out to market gardeners. The only large
building was Grove House (see below), which was situated in its own grounds on
the north side of Old Brompton Road, opposite to the site where South
Kensington Station was later built. Other buildings on the estate included two
public houses, a terrace of eight late eighteenth-century houses known as
King's Head Row, situated on the north side of Old Brompton Road to the west of
Gore Lane, and several houses in Market Court and Gardener's Buildings, off
Kensington High Street, erected under a long lease granted by Harris Thurloe
Brace in 1773. (ref. 85) Market Court and
Gardener's Buildings were later to become a notorious slum and in 1867 this
part of the estate was sold by John Alexander's son to the Metropolitan Board
of Works. (ref. 86) The site is now occupied by
Barker's store. One of the public houses, the Hoop and Toy, is outside the area
of this volume: the other, called the Swan (formerly the Ship), was in Old
Brompton Road at the spot where it is now joined by Queen's Gate. (ref. 87)
John Alexander did not begin to develop his property until
1826, when he contracted with a local builder for the laying out of Alexander
Square on the easternmost part of the estate, (ref. 88) and work was still in progress here when John
Alexander died in 1831. (ref. 89) He was
succeeded by his only surviving son Henry Browne Alexander, a lawyer like his
father, with whom he had shared the practice in Carey Street. (ref. 90) After his father's death H. B. Alexander entered into
partnership with two other solicitors, Harvey Gem, and one of his father's
former clerks, James Pooley. (ref. 91)
It was under his ownership of the estate, which lasted for
more than fifty years, that most of the building development took place. This
was in three distinct phases. During the first, covering the period from 1831
until about the mid-forties, H. B. Alexander continued the development started
by his father and extended it by laying out Thurloe Square and adjoining
streets. (ref. 92) The second phase was begun
some ten years later, in 1857, when he agreed to let the two larger of the
three areas shown on fig. 1 to two different builders. (ref. 93) It is chiefly this second phase that is described in
the present volume. In the third and final stage, which lasted from 1870 until
the 1880's, all the remaining parts of the estate (mostly west of Gloucester
Road) were let to various builders. (ref. 94)
For several years H. B. Alexander presided over the
development of his Kensington property from a newly built house at No. 15
Campden Hill Square which he first occupied in 1838. (ref. 95) But in 1851 he moved away from Kensington and
subsequently he lived at Barnes, and also at Brighton where he died in 1885
leaving a personal estate valued at over half a million pounds. (ref. 96)
In his will H. B. Alexander left the Kensington estate to
his only son, William Henry Alexander, who was then aged fifty-two. (ref. 97) A lawyer by profession, W. H. Alexander
became well known not only for his wealth and his collections of oriental
jewels and curios, but also for his 'boundless liberality', demonstrated most
notably when he gave £80,000 to pay for the National Portrait Gallery's
present building. (ref. 98) He also left the
gallery the portrait of John Thurloe which he had inherited from his father
with other family portraits including a picture of one of his Blake
ancestors. (ref. 99) W. H. Alexander remained a
bachelor and on his death in 1905 his estates passed to his cousin, Sybil. She
had married Lord George Campbell, fourth son of the eighth Duke of Argyll, in
1879, (ref. 100) and it is to their descendants
that what now remains of the Alexander estate still belongs.
Grove House, Brompton
Demolished
This house, which is not to be confused with another of
the same name in Kensington Road (see below), was situated in grounds on the
north side of Old Brompton Road, a little east of the junction with Cromwell
Lane. It was certainly in existence by 1760 and had probably been built some
time between 1720 and 1740. Watercolour views made in the mid nineteenth
century show a rather undistinguished three-storey house, clearly of
eighteenth-century origins but altered and enlarged with a long single-storey
extension on one side. (ref. 101)
The most famous occupant of the house was the blind Bow
Street magistrate Sir John Fielding, who thought that all magistrates should
'each have a little country house at some small distance out of town'. Fielding
lived at Grove House, which he sometimes called Brompton Place, from 1768 until
his death there in September 1780. (ref. 102)
Other occupants have included Joseph George Brett, father of the first Viscount
Esher, from 1806 to 1840, and Anne, Lady Tichborne. (ref. 103) The house was demolished and the grounds laid out
for building in 1857 (see page 286). Its site is now partially covered by the
roadway of Cromwell Place.